


Hold Me Fast and Fear Me Not

by JesBelle



Category: Beauty and the Beast - All Media Types, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: ATU 425, Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Alternate Universe - Magic, Anal Fingering, Biphobia, Bisexual John Watson, Blood and Gore, Dirty Talk, Discussion of Anti-Sodomy Laws, Dry Orgasm, Erectile Dysfunction, Fairy Tale Curses, Frottage, Gay Sherlock Holmes, Historical Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Needles, Nightmares, Not Britpicked, Oral Sex, Sexual Violence, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Surgery, Teratophilia, There's a Case -- a Magic Case!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-28
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:21:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 42,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22698547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JesBelle/pseuds/JesBelle
Summary: Sherlock Holmes is a monster.  Moriarty is a faerie.  Mrs. Hudson is neither a teapot nor your housekeeper.  And John Watson is just trying to keep up.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 40
Kudos: 122





	1. The Fog

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks to my husband for doing the proof-read/beta thing. 
> 
> There are some brief descriptions of violence and gore as part of Sherlock's case and John's nightmares. I'll put a heads-up in the end notes when those come up.
> 
> Oh, and I changed the layout of 221b for porn purposes. Not much, just the stair to John's room -- it's inside the flat now. You'll see why.

In the gathering gloom of twilight, John Watson leaned on his cane and regarded the fog. It was strange — very strange. For one thing, it was thick. For another, it’s existence seemed confined to this one section of — he glanced at the sign on the corner — Baker Street.

 _No sensible person would venture into that_ , he thought.

Everyone who ever saw the fog came to precisely the same conclusion.

Not many people ever saw it. There was almost always something more interesting happening in the opposite direction. But those who did notice simply thought, _No sensible person would venture into that_ , before walking on and forgetting about the fog entirely a few minutes later.

But John Watson — coming home from the funeral of a family acquaintance he hadn’t seen in decades but whose death had prompted Harriet Watson to bully him into putting on his best suit and attending — John Watson did not walk on. He stood, leaning on his cane, and allowed the slight frisson emanating from this bizarre weather condition to wash over him.

He allowed it to wash over him and grow until it became dread.

And because it had been so long since he’d had any feeling at all that wasn’t anger, he became curious.

And he walked straight into the fog.

It swallowed him.

Almost immediately, all other sounds died away except for the slow click of his own footsteps punctuated by the dull thud of the tip of his cane on the… _Were those cobblestones?_ He turned and looked back the way he had come. Flat stones gleamed wetly in the fading light for as far as he could see, which was really only a few metres. Oddly enough, however, his dread had become something more akin to excited curiosity.

Something was finally happening to him.

He turned back and walked on.

And on.

He met no one. The houses and shops appeared to be deserted. He never came to a cross-street nor an alley. John checked his watch. He’d been walking for a little over ten minutes.

He made an about-face and walked back toward the street he’d been on when he’d first encountered the fog. He already knew he wouldn’t find it. Still, he would do his due diligence. He walked back for fifteen minutes.

By then, it was nearly dark, and it finally occurred to him that he had a mobile now — a hand-me-down from his sister. He pulled it out of his trouser pocket and pressed the button to turn it on. The device was nearly three-quarters charged, but it had no bars. He opened his contacts and thumbed Harry’s name anyway — nothing.

John wasn’t normally fazed by the dark. He’d rambled London for months now — often at night — his gun in his jacket pocket. It was there now, but what use was a gun against simply being alone in the fog after dark? He didn’t like it. He preferred solid problems with concrete answers — problems he could solve with a bullet or a fist or a gossamer length of surgical thread.

He didn’t like not knowing what form danger might take or from where it might come.

Fear began to trickle from his solar plexus to his gut.

Three whole emotions in less than one hour.

But this one threatened to overwhelm him. He needed to _do_ something. He looked up and down the dark street, and then he saw it — the small point of light. It was dim, and he couldn’t tell how far off it was, but it was steady, and walking toward it qualified as doing something.

He reached it far more quickly than he’d expected. It was a small circular lamp set in a wall next to a door painted solid, glossy black. The lamp’s top half was shaded, but enough light still reached the brass numbers for him to make them out — 221B.

The door had a heavy brass knocker and, seeing no other course of action, John lifted the knocker and let it drop twice.

In the quiet he heard the distant sound of a door behind this one slamming shut, followed by brisk footsteps. The door opened, and a small, older woman wearing a lace cap and a long black dress with a full skirt appeared. John thought he caught a glimpse of high-buttoned boots as her skirts were momentarily brushed aside by the edge of the door. Realizing that it was probably strange (not to mention rude) to stare at her hem, he returned his gaze to her face.

The cap was gone.

And what he was sure had been a high-necked blouse was now a turtleneck sweater.

The woman seemed as taken aback at his appearance as he was at hers. She recovered quickly though.

“Hello,” she said, smiling warmly. “I hope you haven’t been wandering long. Come in, and I’ll make you a nice cup of tea.”

She stood back and gestured for him to come inside, and John could see that her skirt was now several inches shorter and dark teal rather than black.

“Yeah.” He stepped into the entryway. “Alright. Thanks.”

The woman turned and, bypassing a set of stairs, led him down a narrow hall. He followed her into what turned out to be a kitchen. And what an odd kitchen it was. The walls were covered in huge yellow flowers and the linoleum floor was printed to look like a kelim rug. The cupboards were green, and the small table had chrome-plated legs. There was a tiny white electric hob and a refrigerator so old that the compressor sat on top of it. In the corner was a little shelf full of china cocker spaniels. The room was cozy — inviting, even — but he was sure nothing in it was fewer than thirty or forty years old except for the glass kettle which the woman seemed to be examining as if she regretted throwing out the instructions.

“Have a seat, er… what’s your name, dear?”

“John Watson,” he said. “Dr. John Watson.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” she replied as she filled the kettle. “I’m Mrs. Hudson. I own this building.”

“It’s very nice.” He pulled out a chair and sat.

“So what kind of doctor are you?”

“I’m a— was a surgeon. Tell me — does this happen a lot around here? The… er… the fog and the… rest? Or…”

 _Or maybe I_ _’ve cracked up,_ he thought.

“The fog is always here…” She trailed off as she became preoccupied with figuring out how to get the kettle started. John stood back up and went to her. He showed her how to fit the kettle onto its base and flipped the switch.

“Ah!” she said, smiling at the appliance. “Ingenious. The old one just plugged directly into the wall.”

“This one’s an improvement then,” said John. “Um — but about the fog and the lack of… any other living thing, as far as I can tell?”

“Hm?” She tore her eyes away from the kettle and looked at him. “Oh yes, the… oddness. This is a pocket dimension of Faerie. As for why it’s so foggy — I really couldn’t say. It may serve a purpose or may just be typical Fae drama.”

“A pock— A pocket dimension?”

“Mmhmm. The whole building’s under an enchantment.”

“And the street as well?”

“Not exactly.” She picked up the kettle and poured a bit of the almost-boiling water into a china teapot. She set the kettle back on its base and switched it on again. “That’s not the real Baker Street. It’s a copy, and not a very good one either. This building is real, but no longer a part of the mundane world, I’m afraid.”

“And you just live here… all by yourself in a… in an enchanted house… in a pocket dimension of… Faerie?”

It suddenly occurred to him that she was about to tell him that she was a witch and that she specialised in eating stupid men who wandered into her realm.

“No, of course not. I live with my tenant, Mr. Sherlock Holmes… in an enchanted house, in a pocket dimension of Faerie.” She emptied the teapot in the sink and began to measure the tea into it.

John decided it was best to sit down again. “I see.”

“You do?” She looked at him, her eyes wide with surprise.

“Not really. No.”

“It is _very_ disconcerting,” she acknowledged. “Perhaps Sherlock can explain it better.” The kettle snapped off, and Mrs. Hudson turned away to fill the pot.

For the next few minutes, John simply sat, possibly with his mouth slightly open, certainly with his brow knit in concentration, while Mrs. Hudson bustled about, taking cups and saucers from the cupboard and hunting for some biscuits. She finally found them in the first cupboard she’d searched.

“Well!” she exclaimed. “They changed the box! No wonder I didn’t see it.”

“Someone else does the shopping, eh?”

“It just appears when I’m not looking.” She eyed the kitchen as if it were somehow being deliberately difficult.

“You don’t just nip ‘round to the Faerie Tesco?” said John.

“I can’t ‘nip ‘round’ to anything. This is neither Faerie proper nor the mundane world.”

“You… you can’t _leave_?” _I can_ _’t leave_ , thought John.

“Oh, no. I have to stay.” She set a cup of tea in front of him. “Do you take anything in it?”

“No,” he said, trying to absorb this new piece of information. “No, that’s fine. Thanks.”

Mrs. Hudson went to the refrigerator and removed a small dish with some sliced lemon on it. She slipped one of the slices into her own cup, then poured tea over it. She sat down opposite John and took a sip.

“ _You_ _’ll_ leave, of course,” she said, smiling reassuringly. Then she looked down at her cup and sighed. “Sooner or later.”

After that, they finished their tea in silence.

When they were done, Mrs. Hudson stood and said, “Well! I’d best show you where you’ll be staying and introduce you to your… flatmate?” She said the word with the air of an older person who isn’t sure if that’s what the kids these days are saying.

Apparently, whatever “sooner or later” was, it wasn’t an increment of time measured in minutes.

It wasn’t a heartening thought even if he hadn’t much to get back to — a dreary bedsit, Harry’s intermittent attempts to engage him, and an appointment with his therapist in a week’s time. This was… likely some variety of nervous breakdown, actually, but the key word there was “variety.”

So with no better options presenting themselves, John stood as well. “Right, then,” he said, and followed Mrs. Hudson back out to the hall and up the stairs.

As they entered the flat, Mrs. Hudson called out, “Sherlock?”

John looked around. They were in a large sitting room with a fireplace at one end. There were at least three different damask wallpapers, and the chimney breast was flanked by bookcases crammed full of books and pictures. Two mismatched chairs faced each other in front of the fireplace. Between the tall windows that looked out onto the fog of Baker Street (but not really Baker Street) sat a table piled high with papers and more books. There were additional bookcases against any expanse of wall that could accommodate them, a sofa against the near wall, and a cart with a television that might have been new in 1973. Every surface that wasn’t taken up with books and papers held an odd assortment of curiosities — bottles, insect specimens, botanical drawings, containers made of various materials, and about a dozen small lamps, some of which apparently still burned oil. There was a music stand and a violin case near one of the windows and a human skull on the mantle. John thought it was either a real skull or a remarkable fake.

Mrs. Hudson pointed to the door next to the one though which they had just entered. “Closet,” she said, then pointed to a doorway next to that. “And your room will be up there.”

John leaned into the doorway and saw that the stair went up three steps, then doubled back behind the wall next to the sofa.

Mrs. Hudson went to the end of the room with the fireplace and turned to peer into a room on the left. “Sherlock?” she called again. “You have a guest!”

“I fail to see,” growled a deep voice, “why every stray that washes up on the doorstep somehow belongs to me.”

“Sherlock! He’s standing right here!”

But the words had barely registered with John. It was the quality of that voice that had caught all his attention. He couldn’t quite put his finger on why, but the voice was almost… unnatural. This Sherlock person had spoken quietly, but his voice had filled the room as if it were tuned to a frequency that made the air vibrate with more sympathy than normal voices did — as if the words had issued from one of those wooden console record players that people of John’s grandparents’ generation had once kept in their parlors, the kind that resonate like the body of a piano. The sound sent a shiver up John’s spine much the same way that his first glimpse of the fog had.

“If you say so,” said the voice.

Mrs. Hudson beckoned to John. He stepped closer to her and looked into the room containing the mysterious Sherlock Holmes. It was a kitchen. John could see green tiles and white cabinets gleaming in the light from a shaded fluorescent fixture suspended from the ceiling. The tube clearly illuminated another pile of what John suspected was actually rather organized clutter, but it left the form of the person seated at the far end of the table in shadow.

“This is Dr. John Watson,” said Mrs. Hudson.

“Hello,” said John in the general direction of the shadow.

The form shifted and John saw the outline of a pale face in a too-large head. He thought the man might be wearing earmuffs or headphones. The face tilted slightly.

“Military man,” said Sherlock with great certainty. “Army surgeon,” he added only slightly more speculatively. “You’ve been in the Middle East.”

It wasn’t really a question, but John answered it anyway.

“Afghanistan.”

The face gave a slow nod. “Nasty business. You were injured.” The face tilted again. “But not the leg — your shoulder.”

“More magic?” asked John, irritated at the idea of constantly being at a disadvantage.

“I loathe magic,” said Sherlock. “Reason and observation are much more reliable.”

“Reason and observation? You got all that from ‘reason and observation?’”

“Mrs. Hudson introduced you as a doctor. She wouldn’t do so if you weren’t a medical doctor. Your haircut and bearing say ‘military.’ Current events say you were stationed in the tropics. That you were a surgeon is more of an educated guess. There aren’t that many reasons to send a doctor into a war zone. You favor your left shoulder, but not your leg, which seems to not bother you enough for you to sit down despite the wide range of seating available.”

John smiled despite himself. He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but it wasn’t this. Perhaps if Sherlock had conjured a legion of familiars to whisper the facts of John’s life it would have been less surprising.

“Brilliant,” said John, meaning to be sarcastic, but finding that he wasn’t. “I’ve been dragged into Oz to meet a Vulcan.”

“I have no idea what either of those things are, but you weren’t _dragged_ anywhere. And _I_ am just a monster, albeit a highly intelligent one.”

At this, the dark form that was presumably Sherlock’s body began to unfold itself, and John watched, awestruck, as the pale oval of Sherlock’s face rose until it was swallowed up by the darkness above the shade of the dangling light. _The man must easily clear eight feet,_ thought John, and his chest was proportionately broad. His voice had seemed to emanate from an outsize instrument because it emanated from an outsize instrument.

Sherlock stepped sideways with a lurch, his feet hitting the linoleum with sharp percussion, like someone hitting wooden blocks together. John saw a… hand? It reached out and set a Manila folder on the table with remarkable dexterity considering that it more closely resembled the paw of a great cat or a bear than something human. Dark, reddish-brown hair curled down the back of it, covering his short fingers to the second knuckle (There appeared to be no third knuckle.). The fingertips ended in black, crescent-shaped claws.

Sherlock took two more steps forward, and then John could see him plainly in the light coming from the sitting room.

His odd gait was the result of having digitigrade legs. The hooves — solid like a horse’s — explained the sound of his footsteps. His legs, what little of them John could see below the hem of Sherlock’s long blue dressing gown, were covered with a smooth coat of hair the same color as the fur on his hand except for ivory fetlocks. As John’s eyes moved upward, he noted that the bit of Sherlock’s chest and neck that were visible at the opening of the dressing gown were hairless, but the skin was as pale as milk. Even Sherlock’s lips were pale, barely tinged with pink. His eyes were also unusually light, though whether they were blue or green, John couldn’t tell. Those eyes were regarding him as intently as he was regarding their owner, and it was with difficulty that John broke away from that gaze. That was when he noticed that what he’d first assumed to be headphones were actually horns. They grew, thick and black, from the dark curls at Sherlock’s temples. From there they curved close to his skull, not over his ears but around them, and ended in pointed ivory tips near the hinge of his jaw.

All John could do was stare while the various parts of his brain tried to accept the reality of what he was seeing. The overall effect wasn’t disgusting — alarming, perhaps, but not vile. _Otherworldly_ , thought John; that was the word for it.

“Yes! Well!” said Mrs. Hudson, startling John, who had almost forgotten she existed. She smiled cheerily at him. “Now that you’ve been introduced, I’ll just be going, shall I?” And without waiting for an answer, she left the flat, letting the door bang shut behind her.

“I… erm…” was all John managed to get out before Mrs. Hudson poked her head back in.

“Dinner’s in an hour, but you’ll have to come downstairs for it. I’m not your housekeeper.” She closed the door more quietly this time.

Sherlock moved past John toward the fireplace. John turned to watch him as he flopped himself into a low leather-and-steel chair that John was sure he’d seen in a museum once. “In addition to my grotesque appearance, I keep odd hours,” said Sherlock, as if Mrs. Hudson and an awkward staring contest had never interrupted the conversation. “I am often doing experiments, and this —” He gestured at his dressing gown. “— is as ‘dressed’ as I ever get for obvious reasons. But hopefully my… eccentricities won’t be too irksome during your unavoidable stay here.”

“It’s not that bad,” said John. “I mean— your appearance is… well, what it is… but I’m not bothered by it, actually. And my own personal habits are a bit odd too.” A bit odd was one way to put it. His therapist used much more precise terms. John dismissed that thought in favor of working on the whole being-trapped-in-a-pocket-dimension thing. “Why, exactly, is my stay unavoidable?”

“An eight-year-old could sort that out. You’ve wandered into an enchantment, Dr. Watson. One doesn’t just waltz back out again, you know, or did your parents never read you fairy tales?”

“They did, but they also insisted that those stories weren’t real.”

“Well, now you know. You can figure out how to escape the enchantment or how to break the curse altogether, and you’ll be free to go. In fact, if you break the curse, we’ll all be free to go.”

“Curse?” asked John. “Yeah, of course. I suppose this…” He gestured at Sherlock’s entire physical presence. “…is the result of a curse.”

“Very good, Doctor,” said Sherlock, rolling his eyes extravagantly.

John folded his arms across his chest, whacked himself in the shin with his cane, and decided it was best to just take the rather comfy-looking armchair opposite Sherlock’s. “So who cursed you? And why?” Although, truth be told, John had the beginnings of a hypothesis about that second part.

“A faerie, and that’s none of your business.”

“It’s not? One of my options is to break a curse, but you won’t even tell me how you managed to get cursed in the first place? Something to do with a woman, was it?”

“No,” said Sherlock, his tone clearly meant to discourage John from this line of questioning.

“A man, then?”

“Other people were involved, and those people had genders, but what you’re implying isn’t— I don’t involve myself in romantic entanglements. They’re a distraction from my work.”

“Your... work?”

It hadn’t occurred to John that Sherlock would have a job. Then again, what else would he be doing all day? Reading, clearly. Doing experiments, whatever that entailed. Perhaps the telly worked?

“What do you do?” asked John.

“I’m a consulting detective. The only one, as far as I know.”

“What’s a consulting detective?” asked John.

“People bring me problems — mysteries they can’t solve, crimes that fall outside the purview or expertise of Scotland Yard — and I find the answers.”

“Somehow, despite curses and pocket dimensions, you solve mysteries? In the…” What did Mrs. Hudson call it? “…the mundane world?”

“Most of my cases involve interactions between the worlds. There are channels through which I can be contacted.”

“How do you investigate, though?”

“I must rely on others to do the legwork,” said Sherlock, his lip curling momentarily. “They catalogue the scene, take photos, sometimes they even notice things. Nothing useful, of course, but as long as they’re thorough, I can usually find what I need.”

“Is that what you were working on when I came in?”

Sherlock shook his head. “I’m between cases at the moment. That was an old one — I solved it, but not to my satisfaction.”

“How so?”

“I discovered what had been done, but never why.”

“And that bothers you, so you go over it again when you’ve nothing better to do?”

“As you point out, I’ve nothing better to do.”

“I suppose it must get boring here,” said John. “Same four walls — only one other person for company.”

“Sometimes there are others.”

“Like your channel to the outside world?”

“Yes. And others like you who weren’t paying attention to where they were going and wandered into the fog.”

John smiled. “Well, see. You’re wrong there. I _was_ paying attention, as a matter of fact.”

That got Sherlock’s attention. He leaned toward John and said, “You saw the fog?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“And you just moseyed right into it despite the Aura of Phobos?”

“What’s that? Some kind of spell? Is that why it felt dangerous?” asked John.

“Of course that’s why it felt dangerous. It’s meant to keep people out.” Sherlock stared at John as if he were actually interesting and not just the only port in a storm of ennui.

“Well, apparently it’s not foolproof, is it?” He laughed at his own joke, and to his surprise, Sherlock joined him.

“I hardly think you’re anyone’s fool, John Watson.”

“You’d be one of the few people to hold that opinion these days,” said John, shaking his head, but still smiling. “Am I really the only person to ever get a dose of this ‘Aura of Phobos’ and just say, ‘Fuck it?’”

“Everyone else was either preoccupied or momentarily distracted by something. They always bring it up to point out the unfairness of their predicament. ‘I was reading a letter from my fiance,’ or ‘the grocer across the street had strawberries,’ or ‘a cabhorse threw a shoe.’”

“A cabhorse…? Sherlock, how long have you been here?”

Sherlock’s smile faded. “It’s been 132 years.”

John’s own smile fled him, along with the air in his lungs.

“How is that pos— Stupid question. Sorry.” After all, everything about Sherlock Holmes was impossible.

He was a monster living in an enchantment in the middle of London (but not _really_ in the middle of London). That he had been this for 132 years was just another impossible fact of his existence.

But it seemed to John that it was also an impossibly sad fact.

“And Mrs. Hudson?”

Sherlock’s face shuttered completely, but not before John caught a glimpse of horror in his expression.

“Her as well,” said Sherlock. John hadn’t noticed that Sherlock’s voice had become warmer and more relaxed until now, when it reverted to the disdainful sound that had first sent a chill up his spine.

John remembered something Mrs. Hudson had said when they were having tea in her kitchen. “But I can leave. Like the others who wandered in.”

He was only musing out loud — an unfortunate habit that he’d gotten into lately. His remark seemed to make Sherlock even frostier though.

“There are ways out,” said Sherlock. “There’s even one for Mrs. Hudson and myself. If you’re eager to go, there’s a fast and sure exit on the mantle there.”

“What d’you mean?”

Sherlock jerked his head toward the fireplace. “The leather case.”

John stood and went to the mantel. Among the other objects there was a black, leather-clad case, about the size of a pencil box.

He took it and opened it.

Nestled in its blue velvet lining was an antique syringe and an amber glass vial containing some clear liquid. The needle lay gleaming in its own niche, waiting to be screwed onto the end of the syringe.

“What’s this?” asked John, knowing somehow that he wouldn’t like the answer.

“Cocaine,” said Sherlock, lingering slightly over the word.

“And what am I supposed to do with it?”

Sherlock pushed the sleeve of his dressing gown up and nodded toward the crook of his arm.

“You’re joking,” said John.

“I’m not,” said Sherlock. “After all, I can’t do it myself.” He wiggled the stubby, clawed fingers of his right hand for emphasis.

John slammed the case shut and put it back on the mantel.

“I’m a doctor. I won’t help you poison yourself.”

“How boring,” said Sherlock, standing. “Well, if you’re going to be _moral_ , I guess you’ll just have to find the exit on your own.”

With that, Sherlock clopped back to the kitchen. John watched him disappear into the darkness and heard a distant door closing rather ungently.


	2. The Flat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock has some... unique ideas on how to break the ice.

_His leg throbs. He_ _’s been walking for hours, the rubber tip of his cane hitting the pavers over and over with a muffled thunk, his footsteps unnaturally loud in the stifling quiet of the fog. This time, there’s no half-circle lamp to break up the greyness. He’ll never leave. He’ll never regain the shelter of 221_ _B_ _. There’s nothing nothing nothing but the fog and the dull pain in his leg, in his shoulder, in his head, in the pit of his stomach. There’s no relief and nothing to do…_

… _except put one foot in front of the other._

_Which he does._

_Despite the pain._

_Despite no longer believing that there is reason to do so._

_No hope of Heaven._

_No fear of Hell._

_No one who needs his continued existence._

_Step. Thunk. Step. Throb._

_The fog takes on weight and substance — warm and soft and heavy — like a blanket. Like a quilt. Like the old-fashioned kind of quilt that women used to make using their husbands’ old army blankets for batting._

_The fog is damp. It makes John’s skin clammy despite the warmth. It makes the blanket heavy. He stumbles under its weight. He falls, but there’s no pavement. Just falling and weight, crushing the air from his lungs…_

John woke.

The first thought to register in his conscious mind was that it was too quiet.

He pulled air deep into his lungs — held it for a moment and let it out slowly. He was sweaty and disoriented, lying alone in a strange bed, the first light of day filtering weakly through the fog outside his window.

Right. His window. In his room, or at least, his until he figured out how to break the enchantment keeping him here.

And the quiet was just the absence of others — something he had still not gotten used to.

That was as grounded as it was going to get today.

And, if John were to be honest, it was better than waking up to… what his life had been these last months.

He sat up and disentangled himself from the cream-coloured quilt.

Now that he thought of it, the blanket did feel like the quilt that had covered his childhood bed, courtesy of his mother’s aunt. It had felt lovely, really, when he’d stripped down to his undershirt and pants and crawled under it last night.

Comforting.

The whole bed had felt lovely. The sheets were crisp and smooth, the pillows had just enough loft, and the mattress was firm, but with a layer of some squashy substance on top. He suspected it was an actual feather bed.

Everything about the room was — quaint, as if it had been decorated by someone’s grandmother. The walls were a shade of cream just a few shades darker than the quilt, except for an accent wall covered in another damask wallpaper with grey-green leaves and gold skylarks on a cream background. The mismatched furniture was of excellent quality and wildly different eras — a far cry from the particle-board flat-pack stuff he was used to.

It was an unprecedented level of luxury and cheerfulness in John’s life, but it wasn’t enough to stop the nightmares, apparently.

 _Well, it certainly wasn_ _’t the room’s fault,_ he thought as he headed into the little bathroom on the opposite side of the landing.

Like the bedroom, the bathroom looked simple and homely — white porcelain, black and white tiles, an old clawfoot tub — but everything worked a little too perfectly, was just a little too spotlessly clean. The towels were thick and fluffy, the soap creamy and scented with something light and woodsy, the water flowed at the perfect temperature and pressure. Even the mirror was hung at exactly the correct height to frame John’s face.

He brushed his teeth — the bristles of the toothbrush were soft, the head angled just right; the toothpaste was cinnamon, which John didn’t even know until just then that he preferred. He relieved himself of the astoundingly good beer Mrs. Hudson had served with last night’s beef and carrots, pulled off the rest of his clothes, and stepped into the tub.

The spray from the shower was cool and needle-sharp — just the way John like it of course, but he was coming to expect that. What he hadn’t expected was that his underwear would disappear while he was bathing, to be replaced by a tartan dressing gown and a pair of slippers.

He shrugged and put on the offered garments, wondering how long it would take to get spoiled never having to do anything for himself.

Back in the bedroom, the big enamelled brass bed was neatly made, and a fresh undershirt and pants lay folded on the foot. The suit John had draped across the chair, however, was missing.

John froze. He felt something cold and dark slide up from his stomach to press against his diaphragm.

His gun was in the inner pocket of that jacket.

Or had been.

In addition to the ladder-back chair and a low chest of drawers, there was a tall wardrobe made of dark wood with a geometric design inlaid across the doors. He went to it now and pulled it open. The suit was hung there, at the end of a line of perfectly-pressed button-up shirts.

John patted the suit, then stuck his hands into every pocket in the jacket and trousers for good measure. The gun was gone.

The thing in John’s stomach began slithering up his spine, becoming warm and bright as it went.

He began pulling open the drawers. Belts and braces in this one, socks in the next. He rummaged through them, giving less than one fuck for the mess he was creating. Underwear in the third drawer, jumpers in the fourth, trousers in the fifth. The sixth contained pyjamas, but still no gun.

He looked at the wardrobe again. There was a drawer below the closet. He yanked it open. Shoes.

The base of his skull felt hot and he could almost see the brightness of the rage lurking there, singing to him. Seducing him.

Bedside tables.

He snatched the drawer completely out of the right-hand table, dumping the contents onto the bed. Tissues, lube… a largish pale green dildo.

The sight of it shocked John enough to cut his fuse.

A snort of amusement escaped him. _Well, that_ _’s a thing,_ he thought, and snorted again at the unintended joke.

He took a breath and walked to the other side of the bed. He tugged the drawer open.

Lying neatly inside were the SIG Sauer, his mobile, and his wallet.

John took the weapon and held it, testing its familiar shape and weight in his hand. He checked that it was loaded and that the safety was on before replacing it. He pulled out his mobile and thumbed the home button. Still no signal and the charge had dropped to 68 percent. He powered the device down to save the battery and put it back in the drawer.

Alright then.

 _Clothes_ , he thought, _then food_.

He grabbed a pair of jeans from the still-open drawer and a blue tartan shirt from the wardrobe and dressed quickly. He set the room to rights, strongly suspecting that this would be done for him had he chosen to leave it, but doing it anyway. He stopped in the bathroom one more time to comb his hair before finally going downstairs.

The flat was empty. Well, empty of people anyway.

John went to the kitchen and opened a random cupboard. It contained a tin of bagged tea and mugs. Mrs. Hudson had explained that the house would provide him anything he needed — anything he wanted, really.

“Within reason, of course,” she said. “Just look where you’d expect it to be. It’ll probably be there.”

She’d then gone on to regale John with stories of the house updating itself from time to time. “That first electric hob! Let me tell you!”

And she did tell him.

“But the best was the telly,” she said. “I’d never even seen a film. I barely left my sitting room for over a year.”

“A year spent watching telly?” said John, grinning at the thought.

“Well, you can get any station, you know! I watched everything from Benny Hill to telenovelas. It was some education!”

Sherlock had been absent when John had returned to the flat, presumably doing something in… John guessed that the room behind the kitchen was Sherlock’s bedroom.

And John, feeling sleepy — _pleasantly_ sleepy, he realised — had gone straight up to bed.

Now, as he sat down at the only clear spot on the kitchen table with his mug of tea and his buttered toast, his cane dangling from the edge of the table to his right, he wondered if Sherlock was planning to just exile himself to the back of the flat for the duration of John’s stay.

The clop of hooves on the wood floor behind him said, no, not so much.

“What do you make of this?” asked Sherlock, dropping a couple of eight-by-ten photographs next to John’s plate and sitting in the chair catty-corner from his own.

“Poor bastard,” was all John could think to say. The photos were all of a naked corpse, covered in blood and lying on a tile floor in what appeared to be a large public toilet.

“Is that your professional opinion, Dr. Watson?”

“I didn’t realise I was supposed to be doing a remote autopsy during breakfast.” John picked up the first photo. “He’s got what? A broken arm…” John peered more closely. “…two broken arms, and I’ll bet that foot is broken too. He’s been beaten everywhere with something hard and heavy — a bat, maybe? Probably got a few broken ribs. That’s not to mention what they did to his face. His nose and jaw appear to also be broken and his head was hit so hard and so many times that I can only guess he was murdered somewhere else because his brains should be all over that wall.”

“Anything else?”

“Someone tried to strangle him,” said John, moving on to the second photo — a closer shot of the man from the shoulders up.

“The imprint's of a choke chain. It was found with his clothing. I believe his assailants were using it to restrain him,” said Sherlock.

“But they left his arms free? I don’t see any marks at his wrists. He should’ve been fighting like the devil.”

“Not with iron around his throat.”

“Iron?” It took a second for John to dredge the relevant fact from his sketchy knowledge of folklore. “He was a…?”

“A faerie? Yes, very good, Doctor.”

“And the people who did this?”

“Could have been. The chain was attached to a leather leash.”

“Protecting the holder from the iron and allowing him room to stand back for the man swinging the bat?”

Sherlock smiled. “ _Very_ good, Doctor. You’re miles off, of course, but it was a respectable try nevertheless.”

“Alright. How was he killed?” asked John.

“Magic. Someone got that chain around his neck and used it to distract him from a spell that caused the shutdown of most of his internal organs.”

“And the beating was what? Just there to provide a more plausible cause of death?”

“I believe so. I wanted to know what a modern medical man would make of the scene, and you confirmed my hypothesis.”

“I was just guessing from a couple of photos,” John pointed out.

“I think it’s safe to assume that even a complete autopsy wouldn’t find proof of spell-work,” said Sherlock. “No, I think the conclusion would have been that this man died of his injuries and that the odd state of his liver, appendix, lungs, and kidneys was merely due to the severity of the attack.”

“Why go looking for zebras?”

“Or unicorns, in this case.” Sherlock picked up the top photo and stared at it again. “This ‘poor bastard,’ Virgil Merryweather to his human friends, managed to release a burst of magic — a large enough burst that several faeries came to investigate its origin. They were the ones who identified him. Otherwise, this would have been a case of a random John Doe killed in a train station. Someone wanted this hidden from the Fae, at least for a time. That much is clear.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t most criminals trying to keep their crimes a secret from the authorities?”

Sherlock looked sharply at John. “Many are. Many want certain people to know about them, and some are downright keen to brag. Anyway, the Fae don’t have much in the way of authorities. Their law tends to enforce itself, and where it doesn’t, there are always those more than willing to take up the slack.”

John nodded. “I know the type.” And could empathise with some of them far more than he cared to admit.

Sherlock stared even more intently at John.

“Of course,” he said absently, as if his half of the conversation no longer occupied his mind at all.

John found himself wondering if Sherlock’s eyes were a result of the curse or if they’d always been this strange.

He cleared his throat. “Is this your old case? The one you mentioned yesterday?”

“Yes.”

“You said you knew how it had been done,” John prompted, hoping to get Sherlock back on discussing the case rather than performing what felt like a psychic vivisection.

“Hmm?” Sherlock seemed to snap back from wherever he’d gone. “Yes. His lover, a remarkable woman named Irene Adler, slipped the chain around his neck — under the pretence of some sort of erotic game, presumably. The tag on the collar had an ‘M’ on one side and ‘Property of The Woman,’ Ms. Adler’s _nom de guerre_ , on the other. She then gave him over to an associate or associates, apparently to be murdered.” Sherlock touched a claw to the oddly angled leg of the victim. “Another reason to avoid romantic entanglements.”

“You think it was a crime of passion?”

Sherlock shook his head. “I told you — I don’t know. I have no solid evidence that points to any particular motive. If I went around following hunches and allowing my biases to colour my perceptions, I’d be no better than the idiots who think they know exactly what happened based on the most lurid and titillating possible narrative. Still — if he hadn’t trusted her, she couldn’t have betrayed him. He was too powerful for her to overcome otherwise.”

John drew a breath, thinking of all the bodies he’d lain his own beside, and he almost spoke up. Then he remembered how many of those bodies had belonged to people who didn’t really know anything about him, or vice versa, and changed his mind.

“How d’you know there was an associate?”

“Ms. Adler’s personal secretary said that she admitted Merryweather to Ms. Adler’s home. She and Ms. Adler went to an art opening about an hour later without Merryweather. The secretary assumed he had left by the back entrance. The body was found by a commuter ten minutes after the custodian had cleaned the room. Ms. Adler and her secretary had been in a gallery full of people for over half an hour by then.”

“Establishing an alibi,” remarked John.

“Rather clumsily.” Sherlock shook his head. “She’s far too smart for that.”

“Okay, so this associate or associates or completely unrelated person was presumably not Fae. How did they use a spell?”

“Humans can learn to bend Magic, so long as they can find a way to access the Source,” said Sherlock as if that were obvious. “Or they can simply be given a spell.”

“Given it? How?”

Sherlock sighed. “A faerie can imbue an object with a spell keyed to a certain word of power, and the person who wishes to use the spell says that word and the spell goes off.”

“So like some kind of charm or fetish?”

“Could be,” said Sherlock. “It could be anything. They tailor it to the spell. For example, Ms. Adler had a brass rose that she could speak to when she wanted to contact Merryweather. A spell like this — only meant to be used once — could be contained on a slip of paper or some other disposable item. Although…”

Suddenly Sherlock smiled, his eyes crinkling at the corners in unabashed delight.

“Dr. Watson, you’re astounding.”

It was a charming smile, thought John. Roguish, one might say. The sort of smile that lifted the heart of the person who put it there — even if he hadn’t the faintest idea how he’d done it.

“Your ignorance is positively illuminating,” said Sherlock, getting up and striding over to the desk.

“Erm…” _Ouch_. “Thanks?” said John.

Sherlock ignored him. He picked up an ancient stick-style telephone, fitting the speaker part into the curve of his horn and letting it rest there while he spun the dial with his claw.

John could hear the muffled sound of someone answering the call.

“Gavin,” said Sherlock. “Right, whatever. Listen, I need to examine the rose paperweights from the Merryweather case… What do you mean you don’t remember it? It was Bradstreet’s case — the one with The Woman… Yes, Irene Adler… Yes, I know it’s been closed… Yes, I know it’s been 37 years. I’d think, if anything, that would make it easier to obtain the evidence. It’s not like anyone cares about it anymore… I _know_ times have changed. Will you get it or do I have to go through back channels?”

Apparently Gavin (or whatever) did not prefer that Sherlock go through back channels. Sherlock held the speaker away from his ear for a bit while his (John assumed) contact at Scotland Yard offered his opinions (presumably) on obtaining archived evidence through back channels.

When the noise died down, Sherlock put the speaker once more against his ear and said, “Wonderful. I’ll expect delivery this afternoon… Tomorrow morning then, if that’s the best you can do.” And with that, Sherlock hung up the phone.

“Well, that’s that then,” he said. “Nothing for us to do but wait.”

Us? They were in this together, were they? John shook his head. Well, why not? What else did he have to do — besides get to the heart of his own mystery, of course.

He stood up and took his dishes to the sink.

“So what do we do while we wait?” he asked

Sherlock frowned as if genuinely perplexed by this question. “I usually…” He shook his head. “I am accustomed to solitary pursuits. You’re currently unemployed; how do you fill the hours?”

“How did you know I’m unemployed?” John realised the stupidity of the question as soon as it left his mouth. “Never mind. I go for walks…” _…with my gun in my pocket_ , John thought, as if he couldn’t bear not to finish the sentence, at least in his own head.

 _I take my gun out of its drawer in my desk, and I walk around London with it until the urge to place it in my mouth and pull the trigger passes._ But John left that part out too.

“A walk it is then,” and with that, Sherlock went to the closet and pulled out a dark, woollen trench coat and a shorter, more military-style jacket which he offered to John.

A walk it was then. John took the jacket and followed Sherlock down the stairs.

Out in the fog, they walked in silence. John had braced himself against the possibility of conversation, then began to long for it, but it never came. There was only the soft slap of John’s shoe-leather and the dull clop of Sherlock’s hooves.

John hadn’t really noticed the way Sherlock walked before now. He’d seen the choppy lurch of Sherlock moving in a tight space, but he hadn’t actually watched him when he had room to stretch out. It was impossible to know for sure, of course, but John guessed that Sherlock was likely horse-like from the waist down. His rounded hips swayed as he moved, and John fancied that there was sometimes movement under the coat and dressing-gown that might indicate the presence of a tail.

John wondered if this hypothetical tail was also horselike or if it resembled the tail of some other animal.

“It’s like a lion’s,” said Sherlock finally.

“I— what’s like a lion’s?”

“My tail, Doctor. The one you keep trying to catch glimpses of.”

“I wasn’t,” John lied. “And you can call me John.”

“What were you trying to catch a glimpse of then, John?”

“Your arse.”

“Are you _very_ fond of horses?” asked Sherlock.

“Not at all,” said John, trying not to laugh and snorting instead.

That set them both off.

“It’s not that funny,” said Sherlock, as the fit petered out.

“No, it’s not,” John agreed. It had felt good, though. He’d laughed with two people now in as many days.

Sherlock glanced at John, the slightest smile still curving his lips.

“I’m a conglomeration of beasts, all meant to humiliate me,” he explained, indicating his figure with a theatrical sweep of his arm. “I’m being punished, you know.”

“For what?”

“For doing as I pleased with what’s mine.”

“That an actual crime?”

“No,” said Sherlock. “Not even to the Fae. The exact charge was Ingratitude.”

“Charge? Was there a… trial or something?”

“No. Yes?” Sherlock sighed. “They have a Court, if you can call a capricious mob a court. It’s unheard of for them to take the part of a human over a faerie unless it’s a clear-cut case of outright fraud. If there’s any room for opinion, it’s the faerie’s opinion that counts. Moriarty declared me Ungrateful and the Court accepted that. He was allowed to punish me as he saw fit with no repercussions.”

Sherlock stopped walking and looked straight ahead. He seemed to see something other than the street and the fog. He closed his eyes and shook his head as if to clear it. His eyes, when they opened and met John’s, seemed more uncanny than ever.

“Why would he do such a thing?” asked John.

“Moriarty is wicked and obsessive and dangerous when he’s bored, which is most of the time.”

“And what did you do that was so ungrateful?”

“Ah, that would be telling. That’s against the rules.”

“Rules?”

“Every game has rules,” said Sherlock, “even Cat and Mouse.”

“Is that what he’s doing? Playing with you?”

‘Yes, but don’t let that fool you. The game is deadly serious.”

He walked on and John followed.

“What if he hadn’t been allowed to punish you?”

“He’d likely have gone right ahead and done what he wanted, and damn the consequences.”

“So a real bloody-minded bastard then,” said John.

“That’s one way of putting it.”

They lapsed again into silence and the sounds of their footsteps reminded John of what Sherlock had said about being punished.

“So, turning you into a… this,” said John. “You said this was supposed to humiliate you? By what? Wounding your vanity? Because you don’t really seem the type. To be vain about your looks, I mean.”

“No?” Sherlock pulled his paws out of his pockets and looked at them. “They used to be one of my best traits.”

“If that had been the point, this Moriarty would’ve done something about your eyes and your mouth,” said John before his brain could catch up to what he was saying.

Sherlock let it pass. “I wasn’t really vain about my looks,” he said. “Well, not _excessively_ ,” he amended. “I understood that I was considered attractive by many, and I was willing to use that to my advantage, but that’s not what this is about. Before I was cursed, my body was just the machine that transported my mind. Now it is loud, it is clumsy, and it doesn’t fit into spaces or furniture or clothes scaled to human beings. I am forced, every day, to… _contend_ with it.”

“Are you in pain?” asked John.

“Ask me next time I bang my head on the lintel,” said Sherlock. “How about you?”

“Me?”

“Yes. How’s your leg?”

“It’s…” Fine. It was fine. It didn’t ache or feel weak...

...despite the fact that he’d left his cane upstairs, still hanging from the edge of the kitchen table.

  
  


The next day brought a visitor to the flat. John was sitting in what he supposed had become his chair now, since Sherlock seemed to prefer the other. He’d wheeled the telly over and was attempting to find something to watch. Mrs. Hudson had been right that every channel was available, even streaming services. John was trying to figure out how to get Netflix to work with the ancient remote and its three clicky buttons when someone knocked on the door.

“Get that, would you, John?” asked Sherlock, despite the fact that the sofa upon which he was currently lying was about half the distance from the door.

Despite his better judgement, John got up to do as Sherlock asked.

He had expected Mrs. Hudson, of course, but what he found was a tall man with an impeccable haircut, a grey bespoke suit, and a subtle whiff of expensive cologne. The man carried an umbrella in one hand and a small package in the other.

Sherlock craned his neck to see who it was.

“Ah! My package!” he exclaimed. “Don’t forget to tip the lad for his trouble, John.’

“Very funny, brother mine,” said the man with the package. He stepped around John and unceremoniously dumped the package on Sherlock.

Sherlock caught it between his paws, but it slipped through and thumped him on the chest.

The man in the suit offered his hand to John. “Mycroft Holmes, and you are Dr. Watson.”

“My reputation has preceded me?” asked John, shaking Mycroft’s hand firmly, but not hard enough as to seem insecure.

“I am my brother’s keeper,” replied Mycroft. “I make it a point to investigate his… guests.”

 _And that_ _’s not creepy at all,_ thought John. “I see,” he said. “You must have a very high boredom threshold.”

“Not at all, Doctor. I admit your position on the rugby team and your lacklustre marks in organic chemistry didn’t make for a terribly gripping read, but your military records were most entertaining.”

John folded his arms across his chest. “I scored 87 percent on the final, and how, exactly, did you manage to get access to my records?”

“I work for the government.”

Sherlock dragged himself to a sitting position. “So modest, Mycroft. Usually, to hear you tell it, you practically _are_ the government.”

John looked at Sherlock. “Mycroft’s your ‘channel,’ I take it?”

“So to speak. He’s the only person who can come and go freely from this place. How he managed the trick is anyone’s guess.”

“It was a complicated piece of blood magic,” said Mycroft, “as you already know.”

“Must’ve deleted it,” said Sherlock. “Now quit trying to intimidate John. It’s annoying and fruitless, I assure you.”

“Mmm,” said Mycroft, giving John one last penetrating look before turning back to his brother. “Reopening the Merryweather case? Is Lestrade not giving you enough to do?”

“He gives me plenty to do, most of it beneath my notice,” said Sherlock, using a claw to cut the tape sealing the package.

“Well, since you have so much free time, you won’t mind looking into something for me.”

“Hayes is your leak.” Sherlock peered into the box, turning it this way and that.

“Hayes? This ought to be good.”

“His mistress is a spy.”

“The daughter of Lord Backwater is a spy?”

“I don’t know whether she is or not, but that’s not her, unless Lord Backwater is in the habit of bringing up his children exclusively in the company of native Ukrainians. For the thousandth time, don’t bring me busy-work, Mycroft. Her signature alone should’ve told you that she’d learnt Cyrillic script before Latin.”

“Fine then,” said Mycroft. “I’ll leave you to your old case and your new friend.” He said “friend” as if it were a euphemism for something puzzling and unpleasant — a previously unnoticed boil, perhaps.

“Friend?” said Sherlock, looking horrified by the very idea.

Mycroft just sighed in the general direction of the ceiling, and showed himself out.

“He knows I don’t have friends,” muttered Sherlock.

John supposed it was too early to be using terms like “friend,” but really… Sherlock didn’t have to be quite so appalled by the notion.

“Right,” said John. “I’m just going to go read for a bit.” He headed for the staircase.

“John.”

John turned back toward Sherlock, who was still sitting on the sofa and scowling at the box.

“Yeah?”

“Could you…?” He held up the box. “I seem to be… erm…”

“Oh. Yeah, of course.” John took the box from Sherlock. Wedged into the bottom were two metal knickknacks made to look like the blossoms of climbing roses. It was obvious that Sherlock’s claws couldn’t get enough purchase on the flowers to pull them out.

“Here you go.” John handed one to Sherlock and set the other on the coffee table.

Sherlock took the rose carefully between his paws and crinkled his eyes at John.

“Thanks.”

“Any time,” said John.

  
  


Life settled into a… _something_ at 221B. John hesitated to use the word “routine,” but there was some semblance of a pattern anyway. Every morning he checked to see if his mobile had signal. On the fifth morning, by some miracle, it did. Seeing no sense in alarming anyone with some kind of call for help when he had no clue what kind of help (if any) he really needed, he simply texted his therapist and his sister.

“Can’t make my appt next Wed. Will ring to reschedule.”

“Hey. Got ring from old army mate in the Hebrides. Wants company. Service is spotty here. Don’t worry if you don’t hear from me.”

He got an auto-reply from the therapist’s office saying that his message had been received.

Harry sent him a message back.

“You have a mate in the what???!!!!!!????? Who????!!!!!????”

But the signal was gone again.

Sherlock usually emerged from his bedroom while John was having his breakfast. He didn’t dump any more photos of naked corpses next to John’s toast, thankfully, but he did ask the occasional bizarre question. Sometimes he just grunted what John assumed was some kind of greeting and went straight to the lounge to spend the rest of the day with the brass rose clutched between his paws.

John still took a walk every morning. He felt the tension of too much pent-up energy otherwise. In the afternoons, he read or watched telly. Sometimes Sherlock watched with him. John pretended to be annoyed at the running commentary, but he suspected that Sherlock knew he found it amusing.

“That’s… not how lasers work, John.”

“That’s not how space shuttles work either,” John replied. “It’s a movie.”

“What’s a space shuttle?”

“That thing they all arrived in. The tops don’t just open like that.”

“If you say so. I don’t know anything about…” Sherlock waved his paw toward the screen. “… _space shuttles_.”

“There’s something you don’t know anything about?”

“Have there been any unsolved crimes on a space shuttle?”

“No. I don’t think so anyway.”

“Then I have no reason to know anything about them. And now I shall be forced to go to all the effort of forgetting them— Oh, for Christ’s sake! _There_ _’s no gravity_! Why are they falling?!”

Early on, a laptop had appeared on the other side of the table that Sherlock used as a desk, along with an office chair that looked like something straight out of a 1930’s newsroom.

“It must be for you,” Sherlock said, wiggling his… digits as if John needed the reminder. After all, he had John pick up or open things for him five or six times a day on average.

“A computer?” John booted the computer up. “I wonder what it’s for?”

“What’re they usually for?”

“Watching porn and playing video games. Talking to your friends on social media. All things this can’t do because it’s not connected to the internet.”

Surprisingly, Sherlock had heard of the internet. It was important to _the work_ , apparently.

“They can do other things, surely.”

John checked the applications installed on the machine. Sherlock came around the table and bent low enough to see the screen over John’s shoulder.

“I could use it to write, I suppose. My therapist has been encouraging me to…” _write about my life and my feelings_ , John thought. “I used to enjoy it, you know, back in uni, when I had to write a paper… or something. And the house tends to give me things it thinks I’ll like.” John blushed, remembering the dildo.

“It would give you a ball full of food pellets if it thought it would keep you content,” agreed Sherlock.

So John started writing — mostly about Sherlock or the Case of the Brass Rose since there was little else of interest happening at 221B. Sherlock learned to use the computer quickly enough, and, despite his lack of dexterity, he was a better typist than John even if he did scratch up the “E” key so badly that it became illegible.

“What are you writing?” asked John one day, about two weeks in.

“I’m updating my monograph on the effects of various gross materials on enchantments,” was the reply.

“Is this to do with the roses?”

“Of course it’s to do with the roses,” Sherlock snapped. He glared at the offending objects sitting next to the computer and sighed. “I was rather hoping that this exercise would… spark something. I’m getting nowhere trying to discover who spelled the damn things in the first place.”

John picked up the nearest rose by it’s short brass stem and twirled it in the light coming from the window. He noticed a small mark stamped into the underside of one of the petals — a seven-pointed star.

“You said that even a piece of paper can hold an enchantment?”

“Yes, but paper’s only good for one use. Triggering an enchantment generates heat — enough to burn up a sheet of paper or a scrap of fabric.”

“But brass can take more heat, so it’s good for something that’s going to be used again and again.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “Like a communication device you’re using to chat with your faerie lover — yes, John.”

John continued to twirl the rose. “You said she spoke a word of power to trigger it?”

“ _Copar_.”

“ _Co_ —” Sherlock clapped a paw over John’s mouth.

“Not while you’re holding it, for gods’ sake!”

John set the rose back on the table.

“All she’d have to do,” Sherlock explained, “is touch the rose, say ‘ _copar_ ,’ then draw her hand away before it got hot enough to hurt her. Then she could speak directly to Merryweather, and he to her.”

“Why not just ring him up?”

“Hooking up a telephone in Faerie is much more difficult than giving someone an enchanted object.”

“You have a telephone,” John pointed out.

“And a clever device it is too. I designed it myself. Naturally, it’s enchanted — I’m not using actual phone lines. The stem is made of tempered glass inside a vacuum-sealed steel tube — protection from the heat. The dial triggers one of three enchanted crystals. One contacts Graeme, the second contacts Mycroft. I’ve never used that one, but he insisted, and since he’s the one who procured the crystals, I had little choice.”

“And the third?”

“Hmm?”

“You said there were three.”

Sherlock’s mouth curved into a mischievous smile. “My eyes and ears in the mundane world — the head of an informal group of irregular… collectors of information.”

“Irregular collectors of information?”

“London has never had a shortage of people living on her streets. And since people rarely see what they don’t want to see…”

“The homeless become, in effect, invisible informants,” said John.

“Right,” said Sherlock, turning back to the screen.

“So you talk on that.” John nodded at the telephone. “And Irene Adler talked on this. I assume that one’s Merryweather’s?” He nodded toward a similar rose paperweight.

“Yes. It was found with his clothes in a trash can near the scene. His is copper though.” Sherlock stared at the rose. “It can’t really be that elementary, can it?"

“What can’t?”

Sherlock touched the rose. “ _Since_.” He jerked his paw back. “ _Stop_!” Gingerly, he touched the rose again.

“What happened? Did it—?”

“Ssh!” Sherlock picked up the rose and took it to the kitchen. He put it in the refrigerator.

“I think I turned it off,” he said as he came back to the sitting room. “But just to be sure — it’s better to keep it where it can’t pick up our voices. Obviously, the zinc in the rose provides a second channel to someone.”

  
  


In the evenings, John went to eat with Mrs. Hudson. He could get his own food, of course, but she seemed to enjoy his company, and he felt rather sorry for her. Whatever Sherlock had done to get himself cursed, Mrs Hudson hadn’t had anything to do with it.

“She volunteered to be exiled out of a misplaced sense of loyalty,” was how Sherlock had put it.

“Poor man! I couldn’t leave him to face this all alone,” was how Mrs. Hudson put it. “He’d helped me out of a particularly sticky situation. And my sister, God rest her soul, was gone, so I had no one to miss me. Well — except Mr. Tadley, the greengrocer. I think he’d developed a bit of a _tendre_. I didn’t expect to be absent from the mundane world quite so long, mind you. I’m not sure I’ll recognise it when I get back.”

And, if John was being honest with himself, he enjoyed the company. He really wasn’t a person who was accustomed to not having other people around, even if he was one who was accustomed to keeping them at arm’s length.

And Sherlock tended to make himself scarce during any meal more involved than a slice of buttered toast.

“I don’t eat,” he said. “And my sense of smell is very keen, making food just another source of torture, really.”

So John went downstairs and sat in Mrs. Hudson’s kitchen and let her draw him out about his life before he was injured — or, if he didn’t feel up to talking (and sometimes it seemed like an exhausting endeavour), she would take up the slack with stories of London in her day or her favourite shows.

Eventually, John asked her about the others who had come before him.

"Have there been many?"

"No," she replied. "And certainly none who've stayed a whole month. The rest gave in after less than a week."

“Sherlock said they always got caught in the fog by mistake. I’m the only one to just…” He made his fingers walk across the table. “…right on in.”

“Yes, that Aura of Phobos thing. It keeps almost everyone out. Usually, they end up here because they weren’t paying attention. The last one, a girl of about twenty, was actually reading a book as she walked. There was one memorable young chap who was startled by an air-raid siren during the war. Only nine years old, poor thing. I kept him here in the kitchen, eating biscuits and toast with jam until I figured the raid was over. Then I sent him on home. Well, _he_ certainly wasn’t going to be lifting any curses!”

“You can send people home?” Why had she never told him this?

“It’s my house. Even the Fae recognize my right to refuse a tenant. But I only do it if they’re terribly unsuitable. Children or… Well, I don’t let them stay if they’re on drugs — with Sherlock… you know. And the one time I did allow it, the fellow was out within the hour. That’s how I found out that anyone he talks into helping him… _shoot up_ … gets an immediate boot back to the mundane world. I believe that's Mycroft's doing, but for once, I agree with him. It’s a wicked deed!”

 _She could send people home,_ John thought. _She hadn_ _’t even mentioned it._

“But I’m… suitable?” John wasn’t sure what to do with this information. The absolute last person in the universe that he wanted to be angry with was Mrs. Hudson, but he could feel it — that exhilarating shiver, that breathless _readying_ of his body.

“John Watson,” she said, shaking her head in exasperation. “You’re the most suitable person to ever come through here.”

“But… what if I didn’t want to stay?”

“How could you know? You hadn’t even met Sherlock.”

“But after that?”

“After that? Oh, dear.” Mrs. Hudson bit her lip. “I can’t send you home once you’ve spent the night. I’m so sorry. You seemed content, and there’s really been no one else who…”

“Who you think can lift the curse.” His voice was low and his enunciation precise.

“Forgive me. I should have said something, I know. I just figured… if you were unhappy… Sherlock would send you back himself.”

Silence.

Mrs. Hudson, her eyes wide with regret.

A half-eaten dinner — roasted chicken and buttered Brussels sprouts.

And John Watson, letting this last revelation sink in.

What had Sherlock said? “There are ways out.” Then he’d shown John the little case on the mantel. He’d told John there was also a curse that could be lifted.

But he hadn’t said, “You can try to convince my landlady to let you go, so long as you do it before bed.”

He certainly hadn’t even hinted that he himself had that power. Apparently, with no restrictions.

John stood up and placed his napkin beside his plate.

“I see,” he said, and turned to leave.

Mrs. Hudson stood as well.

“John. I really am—”

“I know,” he said. He looked at her over his shoulder. “It’s alright. I understand.”

He didn’t forgive her yet, but it was only a matter of time.

Probably not even much time, he thought.

But right now, all he wanted was to deliver this righteous rage to the person who deserved it.

It was a bad idea. It was not what he should do. He marched up the stairs anyway.

Sherlock was sitting slouched in his favourite chair in front of the fire, his long legs stretched so far out that his crossed hooves were under John’s chair. He looked up at John’s entrance, surprised.

“That was fast. You shouldn’t bolt your food, you know.”

“You bastard.”

“There’s no sense in denying it, of course, but I would like to know what particular offence finally drove you to that conclusion,” said Sherlock, looking elaborately bored.

“You fucking prick.”

“Insults have really degenerated since my day.”

“You lied to me. You said there was no way for me to leave but to break the curse. You— you’re _holding_ me here.”

“I am not.” Sherlock looked meaningfully at the case on the mantel. “I gave you an out.”

John shook his head.

“You still want it that bad? After 132 years? You still want that shit in your veins so bad that you’ve conveniently forgotten that you have the ability to just send me out of here?”

“I fail to see why you think I’d want it _less_ after 132 years.” Sherlock sat up in his chair. “Why do you think it’s there, John? It’s there to remind me that it exists and I can’t have it. No matter how much _tedium_ I’m made to endure for over a century, that simple comfort is denied me. It sits right there, where I can see it every day. If I move it, hide it, it turns up there within the hour to taunt me with its presence.”

John crossed to the mantel and picked up the case. He took out the syringe and screwed the needle onto it. He took the vial in his other hand.

He turned to Sherlock and asked, “How much?”

“All of it,” said Sherlock. He held John’s gaze as he pulled up the sleeve of his dressing gown.

The look in Sherlock’s eyes was neither one of excitement nor anticipation.

He look relieved, yet somehow broken, as if he were collapsing under some burden held too long.

John looked at the vial — at the tiny, handwritten label.

“7%,” it read.

It wasn’t the release of drugs that Sherlock was looking for.

John turned and strode to the kitchen. He threw the vial as hard as he could into the cast-iron sink, smashing it into a thousand shards.

He turned on the water and watched as it washed the liquid and the glass fragments down the drain.

He doubted that the mess would harm magical pipes.

And because he was still so angry that he was shaking, he broke the syringe in half for good measure, cutting himself in the process.

“You’re bleeding,” said Sherlock from where he now stood beside the kitchen table.

John nodded and wrapped his hand in a tea towel. “I’m sure there’s a first-aid kit with everything I need in the medicine cabinet upstairs.” With that, he did what he should have done in the first place. He turned and headed for his bedroom.

“I didn’t tell you that there were other ways out because… I wanted you to stay.”

John stopped, his foot on the first stair.

Sherlock went on. “I can open a door for you to leave, but it requires much, and I don’t know how long I could hold it open for you to come back.

“I can also tell you the details of the curse. Once you know what has to be done to end it, you’ll be… disqualified and free to go. That’s how I let most of your predecessors go — the ones who wouldn’t…”

John looked down at his hand. Blood was soaking through the towel in spots. He felt drained and achy as the adrenaline in his system ebbed.

“If you ask me to let you go, I will,” said Sherlock.

John looked down at his foot resting on the first stair. “I was bluffing,” he said. “I wouldn’t have given you the drug.”

As he continued up the stairs, John realised that he sincerely hoped that was true.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a gory description of a corpse that was beaten to death in this chapter. Drugs and needles show up again at the end, as well as an accidental cut to John's hand. Suicidal ideation and a suicide attempt also occur.


	3. The Stair

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John and Sherlock do some things.

As it turned out, there was a first-aid kit in the bathroom. John used the contents to clean and bandage the wound, making a mental note to damage his non-dominant hand next time.

The syringe case did not reappear on the mantel.

And things went back to what passed for normal at Baker Street.

Except for the line. Two mornings after “the incident,” John found Sherlock clumsily placing a piece of black gaffer’s tape on the third step after the switchback on the staircase leading to John’s bedroom.

“What’s this then?” asked John, taking the tape from Sherlock and placing it on the leading edge of the step himself.

“I need you to not pass that line between three and four a.m.,” said Sherlock.

“Any particular reason?” asked John.

“I get rather peckish during the witching hour. Might decide I fancy an army doctor sandwich some night.”

“You don’t eat.”

“Are you going to take my word for that?” asked Sherlock, baring his teeth which were, honestly, the least bestial-looking part of him.

“See, I knew Mrs. Hudson was feeding me up for something. What’s to keep you from coming up to my bedroom and making a meal of me?”

Sherlock swallowed, and John momentarily entertained the notion that Sherlock really did have a yen to eat him.

“Between the difficulty of fitting myself up these narrow stairs and the sound of my hooves, I have no doubt you’d have plenty of warning of my arrival. I trust that you’d value your life enough to shoot me with that gun you keep up there.”

“You know about that?”

Sherlock smiled. “You really should get a shoulder holster. Keeping it in your pocket does dreadful things to the line of your suit.”

“Right,” said John as Sherlock descended more gracefully than he’d just led John to believe he could. “Thanks for the tip.”

Since Sherlock was clearly disinclined to be more forthcoming, John simply threw the mysterious line on the pile of other mysteries he’d probably never solve.

“How’s the Merryweather case going?” he asked.

Sherlock loved to talk about the Merryweather case except when he didn’t. Today, however, he seemed eager to bounce his thoughts off his audience of one.

“A second line, presumably to another faerie, does shed some light,” said Sherlock, folding himself into his chair in front of the fire. “I was dissatisfied, to say the least, with the Yard’s narrative of events.”

John took his own seat. “Which was what, for those of us who haven’t been following the case since the Eighties?”

“Ms. Adler’s profession was providing discreet entertainment for those of a peculiar taste,” said Sherlock.

John snorted at this delicate description. “She tied people up for fun and profit, you mean.”

“A great deal of profit. Her clientele was decidedly well-heeled. The story at the time was that Merryweather had somehow gotten hold of evidence that linked several highly-placed people to her.”

“And had he?”

“None was found at his residence. However, it was common knowledge in her circle that she kept compromising photographs of her clients as ‘insurance.’ Merryweather could have found them, and she would most definitely want them back.”

“Enough to kill?”

“Perhaps?” Sherlock scowled at a spot on the floor about two feet to the right of John’s chair. “It wasn’t like her, but if cornered, people are liable to do any number of things.”

“What would Merryweather do with them?”

Sherlock looked up at John and wrinkled his nose at the stupidity of this question. “Blackmail her? Blackmail her clients? Both, probably. He was a crook. His crimes were so egregious, he’d been banished from Faerie. They think cheating humans is very clever, but do it once too often to one’s fellows, and they’ll stop being amused.”

“So, maybe it was another faerie who wanted him dead?”

“You think?”

“Yeah, okay.”

Sherlock sighed. “The problem is they can’t just kill each other for grudges. You can imagine why. Only a handful are born each century. They’d exterminate themselves within a fortnight. Killing Merryweather, even indirectly, would bring the entirety of the Fae down on the offender. Which brings us ‘round again to The Woman, and… I just don’t buy it.”

“Can’t imagine why not,” said John dryly.

“What do you mean?” asked Sherlock, narrowing his eyes.

“Well, you have a certain tone of voice when you talk about her.”

“I do?”

“You do.”

“What kind of tone?”

“I’d call it an admiring tone.”

“I suppose I do admire her,” said Sherlock. “She’s smart, resourceful… and unapologetic.”

“Where is she now?” asked John.

Sherlock shrugged. “She escaped prison less than a year after her conviction. No one’s seen nor heard from her since.”

“So you admire her, but you don’t give a damn where she’s buggered off to?”

Sherlock made a show of actually contemplating this question before saying, “Nnnnnope. I wish her the best of luck.”

  
  


_He’s been lying here for hours, eyes closed, trying to sleep, but it’s no use. His body feels heavy and awkward — a sack of wet clay that must must be dragged and rolled into a comfortable position only to grow bones and muscles that ache and must be shifted again._

_Over and over._

_The sheets are rough against his elbows as he leans up to turn his pillow over. He can feel grit under his hip._

_He rolls from facing the window to facing the door._

_It’s open, and the light from the landing reveals an unnaturally large figure standing there._

_Sherlock?_

_John doesn’t move. If he keeps still, perhaps Sherlock will just leave._

_Sherlock doesn’t leave. He takes slow, steady steps toward the bed. He comes right to the edge._

_John sees it all so clearly though his eyes are three-quarters shut. The light from the landing shines golden on the white enamel coating of the bed, glints off the burgundy silk of Sherlock’s dressing gown._

_John doesn’t move. If he moves, Sherlock will know that he’s awake, that he’s seen._

_John feels the sound before he hears it. It rolls over his skin and makes the hair at the back of his neck stand up._

_Sherlock is growling._

_It’s a feral sound — full of menace and warning — a moment of weakness — an excited utterance before the beast strikes._

_John’s body is cold and slick with sweat._

_He wonders if he can reach his gun in time._

_He needs to act_ now _._

_He throws the blanket off and scrambles to the other side of the bed. He yanks the drawer open and grabs the gun._

_He turns back to confront Sherlock and freezes._

_Sherlock is no longer just a hulking shadow, backlit by the bulb in the landing fixture._

_He’s lit by some by some unknown source and John can see him clearly._

_Sherlock is covered in blood. The skin of his face and neck hangs in tatters. There are bloody clumps of flesh under Sherlock’s claws._

_"John,” whispers Sherlock through his ruined mouth. “Help me, John.”_

_John’s brain searches frantically for the things he’ll need — sutures, antiseptics, bandages, a place to lay Sherlock that’s as clean as possible while John works on him. The blankets tangle themselves around his body again as he tries to free himself from the bed._

He woke with a shout.

The room contained only familiar shadows in the near-total darkness. The door was closed.

He could hear violin music playing on the other side.

He tried to recall if Sherlock had a cd player. The sound seemed too clear for vinyl and too dynamic for an mp3.

John glanced at the clock — 3:20 a.m. — “the witching hour,” as Sherlock had called it. Well, there was no prohibition on him crossing the landing to empty his bladder, so John got up and threw on his dressing gown.

As soon as he opened his door, he knew the music was no recording.

He had wondered about the violin case. How on earth would Sherlock play the violin? But Sherlock never opened it, and eventually it became just another item in the collection of strange objects downstairs, relegated in John’s mind to background inconsequentia.

John supposed that the violin could be Mycroft’s, and that he came over to play it occasionally in the middle of the night, but dismissed that thought immediately.

Mrs. Hudson?

No. The most likely answer was that Sherlock had a violin and the manual dexterity to play it very well, despite claiming that he couldn’t even work a syringe.

Pissing entirely forgotten, John started down the stairs, determined to solve at least one mystery around here.

The music halted abruptly.

“John?” Sherlock’s voice was tense and… smaller somehow. “Don’t come any further.”

“I’m on the step with the tape,” called John. “It’s fine. I’m stopping here.” Then, because he couldn’t think of a better question, he asked, “Are you playing the violin?”

“No, John. I’m playing the sousaphone.”

“Sherlock.” John took a deep breath for patience. “ _How_ are you playing the violin?”

“I’m… with my hands. I’m human for an hour each night, but you mustn’t see me. It would ruin everything.”

“Another one of your little secrets?”

“John, I swear I planned to tell you day after tomorrow. This just started two nights ago. I suspect it may be because you broke the vial.”

Sherlock’s voice was nearer now. He must have come close to the doorway at the bottom of the staircase.

Once again, information from Sherlock generated more questions.

Why did Sherlock think there was a correlation?

Did this mean that John was somehow closer to breaking the curse altogether?

“Why day after tomorrow?”

“I wanted to be sure this wasn’t just a three-night thing,” said Sherlock. “Magic often runs in threes.”

“Alright. But if you didn’t want me to know, why were you playing the violin?”

Sherlock said nothing for a few moments. When he did, his voice came from just around the corner.

“You were having a nightmare again. And it seemed to help last night.”

“You can hear me… upstairs?”

“Well, you have a tendency to shout. ‘No,’ mostly. And on one occasion, ‘Suction!’ I assume you were dreaming about surgery.”

“I do. Sometimes.”

Then John had another thought, equally horrifying in its own way.

“Wait. What can you hear in your… other form?” John was generally silent when wanking, but he’d begun using the dildo — after all, he had plenty of time for elaborate masturbation scenarios these days — and he sometimes lost his head a bit.

Sherlock laughed. “If it makes you feel any better, I spent my first night with human hands engaged in a solid half-hour of self-abuse.”

John laughed too. “A little better, I suppose.”

“So I’m forgiven?”

“If you’ll play some more for me.”

“Any requests?”

“No.”

“Good. I don’t do requests.”

And John sat and listened as music filled the flat.

  
  


The next night, John woke to the sound of the violin at seven minutes after three.

“Not just a three-night thing then?” he called as he took his seat on the stair.

“Nope,” yelled Sherlock over the music.

The tune he was playing was very nearly cheerful and John was smiling to himself as he listened.

It was kind of sweet.

As Sherlock’s overtures toward engagement went, this was probably the nicest — certainly better than autopsy photos at breakfast.

The night after that, the music woke him at nearly three-thirty.

It woke him at a quarter-after the night after that.

Whenever he heard Sherlock playing, John got up, put on his tartan dressing gown and slippers, and went down the stairs where he sat and listened with his arms resting on his knees and his toes on the edge of the gaffers’ tape.

Sometimes they talked afterwards. It seemed to be the only time that Sherlock was utterly disinterested in discussing the Merryweather case. They talked instead about dreams and music and things they had read or seen that had left impressions on them.

They talked about small things — things that John would have normally considered too trivial or boring to share.

But his guard was down. It had become so automatic — music, dressing gown, slippers, stair — that John was still half-asleep by the time he was seated. The fact that they couldn’t see each other only added to the isolated, dreamlike quality of the conversations.

It was like the conversations you have while sobering up with your mates at a coffee shop, John thought. Or as a kid, chatting on the phone after your parents were in bed… or pillow talk.

Some nights there was no music and John wondered if Sherlock was sulking or masturbating. But most nights there was the violin followed by idle, meandering discussion that ended a few minutes before Sherlock was due to transform.

“It’s almost four, John. You should get some sleep.”

John stood to go. He didn’t mind obeying Sherlock’s not-so-subtle demand to be left alone. It was, after all, put far more politely than Sherlock’s usual demands. Perhaps that’s what troubled John. Sherlock was redirecting him, and John wondered from what.

“Does it hurt?” asked John. “Changing back?”

“No.”

John was going to drop it and go to bed, when Sherlock spoke again. “When you were recuperating from your wound, did you ever dream that you were uninjured?”

“Yeah,” said John.

“And when you woke up, was there a moment of elation that your body was whole?”

John saw where this was going. “Yeah.”

“And then you were crushed by the realisation that everything was indeed irrevocably different.”

“Yeah,” John said quietly.

“I prefer to be alone for that part.”

John nodded despite knowing that Sherlock couldn’t see him. He started up the stairs, then stopped.

“Sherlock?”

“Yes?”

“I’m still here. I haven’t given up hope — about breaking the curse, I mean.”

“Me neither. Goodnight.”

“Okay — goodnight.”

  
  


When John returned to the flat the next day, he found Mrs. Hudson in his armchair, sitting primly with a cup of tea and chatting with Sherlock who had folded himself into his own chair in an almost normal sitting position.

They both turned to look at him as he entered.

“There you are!” said Mrs. Hudson. “How was your walk?”

“It was a run, actually,” said John. “I’ve started running again.”

Mrs. Hudson pursed her lips disapprovingly. “Running for the sake of amusement isn’t something we did in my day.”

“There were athletes, surely?” asked John, knowing damn-well there were.

“Mmm,” she replied, taking a sip of her tea. “It wasn’t a pursuit for respectable gentlemen.”

“What led you to believe that John is respectable?” asked Sherlock.

John grinned and proved the depth of his depravity by pilfering a biscuit from the tray on the side table.

“You know, you were meant to be a good influence on _him_ ,” said Mrs. Hudson, scowling severely at John, “not let him be a bad influence on _you_.”

“How did this become my fault?” asked Sherlock.

“Maybe I wouldn’t need so much fresh air if the flat didn’t smell of burnt rubber and old eggs?” John observed.

“That was _weeks_ ago!”

John winked at Mrs. Hudson and headed up the stairs to his bathroom.

It _has_ been weeks, John mused as he ducked under the spray in the shower. He wondered how long it had been since he’d last attempted to contact Harry. He’d stopped checking his mobile every day in an attempt to nurse the battery along.

Back in his bedroom, he pulled out the mobile and turned it on. 11% charge. He wondered briefly why the house hadn’t seen fit to supply him with a charging cable.

There was signal but no new message from Harry. He sent one to her.

_Still in Hebrides. Sorry I haven’t texted. Everything okay there?_

He left the mobile on while he dressed, but Harry didn’t answer. John powered the mobile down and slipped it back into the drawer.

Sherlock was standing in front of the open fridge, staring at the brass rose, when John came downstairs.

“Any luck?” asked John as he filled the kettle.

“Luck?” said Sherlock, curling his lip in disgust.

“Any brilliant insights, then?”

“No. No new ones, anyway.”

John fished a mug out of the drainer.

“I’m worried about my sister,” he said. “I haven’t heard from her in weeks, and my mobile’s about to die.”

Sherlock dragged his gaze from the rose to John’s profile. He frowned as if John were speaking a language with which Sherlock was only passingly familiar.

“Your mobile telephone’s battery is running out?” he asked after a long pause.

“Yeah.”

“I’m surprised it’s lasted this long.”

“It’s pretty new and I’ve been keeping it turned off. Why doesn’t a charger just show up, anyway?”

“Perhaps you don’t wish to speak to your sister as much as you think you do.”

John considered this as he poured hot water over the teabag in his mug. Being incommunicado did simplify things. Still…

“I really don’t want her to fret,” said John.

“If she hasn’t contacted you in weeks, chances are she’s not fretting,” Sherlock pointed out.

“Sooner or later she’ll run out of girlfriend drama and work drama, and then she’ll be back on family drama. And that’s me. I’m family drama.”

Sherlock pointed to the drawers behind John. “Try the…” He waved his hand a bit. “…second from the bottom.”

John tugged the drawer open. Sitting on top of a pile of vintage cooking gadgets and old lab equipment was a charging cable wound neatly around its brick.

John grinned. “You’re a lifesaver,” he said.

“You should really be more careful about your language even in just a pocket dimension of Faerie,” said Sherlock.

John found the remark remarkably cryptic, even coming from Sherlock.

Sherlock shut his eyes and shook his head. “That’s it,” he whispered. “That’s it! John you amaze me.”

“I— what?”

Sherlock slammed the door shut on the refrigerator and strode over to the mantel.

“Where’s the slipper?”

“The what?” John stood in the kitchen holding his tea in both hands.

“The slipper! I keep my tobacco in a Persian slipper!”

“Uh… not that I’ve seen, you don’t.”

“Ugh! I gave up smoking! Not that I had a choice.” Sherlock turned in place, eyes darting around the flat. “I need nicotine.”

“If you conjure up an Rx form in your magic drawer there, I could prescribe you a patch,” said John.

Sherlock smiled. “Or…” he returned to the kitchen as dramatically as he’d vacated it. John had to hop aside as Sherlock practically dove for the second drawer from the bottom.

Sitting atop the pile of peelers, graters, rubber tubing, and rusty forceps was a box of nicotine patches.

Sherlock snatched it up.

“I’m not to be disturbed,” he said on his way back to his bedroom.

John took the cable upstairs and plugged his mobile in to charge.

  
  


Sherlock remained in his bedroom for the rest of the day, and John didn’t hear him playing that night. He wasn’t at breakfast, either, but when John returned from his run, Sherlock was lying on the sofa, talking to someone on his telephone.

“Of course there’s a connection. He went out of his way to make sure I’d see it. Avery Dain was already a known alias. No, what I’m saying is that he wanted me to believe that.”

Whoever was on the other end went on for a bit while Sherlock broadcast his boredom to the cheap seats.

“It’s precisely because he helped Merryweather before that I suspect him now. If he didn’t want to pay the price for his little prank, it needed to be someone whose life was already forfeit to him.” Sherlock held up a finger to stop John from heading upstairs. “Of course I don’t have proof. That’s your job. Let me know as soon as you have it.”

Sherlock hung up the phone.

“Do you have a moment?” he asked.

“Nope. Schedule’s all filled up, I’m afraid,” said John.

Sherlock just handed him the telephone.

John set it on the desk.

“Anything else?” asked John.

“No,” said Sherlock, rolling onto his side.

His robe had come untied while he’d been lounging about, and now it gaped open.

John had wondered in passing about the parts of Sherlock’s unusual anatomy that were not usually on display. He had surmised, by the roundness of Sherlock’s hips and buttocks that his legs were equine all the way up, and Sherlock himself had confirmed the presence of a tail.

But what arrested John’s attention was something he’d not even considered in passing.

Sherlock’s penis was… immense. John supposed it was also somewhat horse-like, at least in size and coloration. Though it was shaped like a human penis, it was brown-and-cream piebald and long enough to literally reach nearly to his knees. ( _Ankles_ , John thought. _On a horse, that would actually be the ankle_. He shook his head to clear the thought.) Sherlock's prick was easily as big around as a cricket ball — two of which he appeared to be carrying in the sac behind it.

One part of John’s brain was musing on whether or not he’d ever actually seen a horse’s penis and how Sherlock’s member might compare to it — he was fairly sure that horse cocks were shaped differently. The rest of his brain was trying to remember something very important.

The look on Sherlock’s face as he twitched the robe back over his lap reminded John of that very important thing — it’s rude to stare at someone’s prick uninvited.

“Sorry,” said John. “I didn’t mean to— It’s just— erm…”

“It’s a joke,” said Sherlock. “I told you. It’s all a grand joke at my expense.”

“A joke?”

“It’s useless. My heart doesn’t beat, so it can never fill with blood. My kidneys don’t even function, so it’s useless for that too. It’s just this monstrous thing I have to carry around with me, and it serves no purpose other than to mock me.”

“I don’t get it,” said John. “How is that a joke?”

“I had a certain reputation for visiting… pleasure houses, I suppose one might say.”

“So Moriarty gave you this… in order to remind you… of what you can’t have anymore?”

Sherlock smiled mirthlessly. “Oh, he knew it was only a reputation. I had contacts among the workers — people who gathered information for me from time to time. He knew I never engaged in amorous activities with anyone. This—” He hefted his cock, wrapped in the silk of his dressing gown. “ _This_ is meant to remind me of all the ‘pleasures’ I missed in my single-minded pursuit of Truth.”

Sherlock stood and tried to retie his robe. “It’s all meant to remind me that my current form is just an outward representation of the freak I’ve always been.”

“You’re not—” John reached out and took the tie from Sherlock’s claws. “Here. Let me.” He tied the belt securely with a slip knot.

John dropped his hands and looked up into Sherlock’s sea-blue eyes. “You’re not a freak,” he said.

“You’re lying,” said Sherlock. “But I appreciate the sentiment.”

“I mean it,” said John. “Not to me, not anymore.”

“So you’ve grown accustomed to me.”

“Is that a bad thing?” asked John. “You’ve gotten used to me.”

“No,” said Sherlock. “It’s not a bad thing.”

“Good,” said John. He stared into Sherlock’s eyes a moment longer, trying to read his expression. Well, it was better than staring at his prick, he figured, but still a good bit awkward. He hooked his thumb over his shoulder. “I’ll go take a shower now, then.”

Sherlock just nodded, and John turned and left.

  
  


“ _Help me, John.”_

_Sherlock staggers into John’s bedroom. His robe is untied and John can see that his cock is hard. Can’t miss it._

_He flops onto the mattress next to John._

_"You did this to me, John. Take care of it.”_

_"I did this?”_

_Sherlock takes John’s hand, draws it toward the monster between his legs._

_"I saw how you looked at it, John. I saw the dirty thoughts in your head.”_

_"I wasn’t…” but he is now._

_So maybe he was then, too._

_Sherlock slaps John’s hand to the base of his cock._

_John sits up, puts both hands around Sherlock. It’s the only way to fully encircle him._

_Sherlock moans and arches, pushing into John’s grasp._

_His cock is immense — the skin is unbelievably smooth. He feels like steel padded with the softest velvet. John pets him, strokes him, slides his foreskin back and forth._

_"Put it in your mouth, John. Show me what you know. Show me what you’ve done with other men.”_

_"I… How did you know?” How does he ever know? It was probably written all over him in signs only Sherlock can read — John Watson, cocksucker._

_"Just do it. Suck me.”_

_"I can’t, Sherlock. It’ll never fit.”_

_"You can. You want it.”_

_John can’t deny that, so he kneels by Sherlock’s hip and puts his mouth against the head of Sherlock’s cock and licks, surrounding as much of the tip as he can with his lips stretched wide._

_He concentrates, tonguing the slit and continuing to slide his hands up and down Sherlock’s shaft._

_"John. More. Get me wet, John.”_

_John doubts he has that much spit. He leans across Sherlock and opens the bedside drawer. He grabs the lube and flips it open, fills the cupped palm of his hand. He spreads it over Sherlock’s cock, going back for a second handful, then a third._

_"Yes! That’s it, John! Oh God, that’s it! Get me dripping.”_

_"You like it this way, yeah?”_

_"I need it this way…” He puts his paw on John’s shoulder and pushes._

_Pushes John’s face down into the soft quilt._

_He’s behind John, one paw still between John’s shoulder blades and the other wrapped around John’s hip, claws tearing at his skin as he pulls John’s arse higher into the air._

_John feels the monstrous head of Sherlock’s cock nudging against his hole._

_No, he thinks. I can’t!_

_"I need it good and wet,” growls Sherlock. “Because I am going to split you in two.”_

He woke, breathing hard and sweating.

And with an erection that could pound a railroad spike through a cement slab.

He lay there, trying to decide if he’d just had a nightmare or an erotic dream with his cock voting for erotic dream.

And his racing heart voting for nightmare.

It took him a moment to register the soft music coming from downstairs. If he hadn’t been sleeping with his door open, hoping that Sherlock would play tonight after ignoring him all day, he wouldn’t have heard it at all. He pulled on his robe and padded down the stairs. He adjusted his still-erect cock as he sat down on his usual step.

Whatever Sherlock was playing, it was melancholy and full of so much longing, John could feel it catching on something in the general area of his solar plexus. For the first time since they had begun these midnight rendezvous, he wished that he could continue down the stairs, into the warm lamp-light of the sitting room.

The stair felt cold and dark in comparison.

He wanted to sit in his chair and watch Sherlock play.

He pictured Sherlock in silhouette — human-sized and dwarfed by his dressing-gown — swaying with the music he was making.

He wondered what Sherlock’s hands looked like. His fingers were probably long and sensitive, yet strong. He’d said they had once been his best feature. Was he glad to get them back, if only for an hour every night? Was that why he played? Or was it for John that he played?

He felt another tug on the lump in his chest.

It couldn’t have been for John tonight though. It was too quiet. This lonely, yearning music hadn’t been meant for his ears.

On the other hand, Sherlock could have easily taken the violin into his own room if he’d wanted absolute privacy.

Some things are whispered half in the hope that someone will hear and half in fear of it.

So John listened. He sat on the cold, hard stair and let Sherlock’s song fill him, let it swirl around his body, let it reverberate in his chest and vibrate in the stiff flesh of his cock.

He thought about Sherlock’s hands. His hands were touching the violin and the violin was responding with this… this… this voice full of want and beauty.

John wanted those hands. He wanted them on his body and he wanted Sherlock’s voice in his ear. He wanted all the desire that Sherlock was pouring into his instrument.

He wanted to feel it.

John reached a hand into his pyjamas and wrapped it around his cock.

He leaned back on the stairs behind him and let his mind drift as he stroked himself. Images of Sherlock’s imagined hands were quickly replaced by images of the Sherlock John knew — curly hair and curved horns, pale skin and sleek fur, human mouth and bestial claws.

There had been a time, a long time ago, when the list of things that turned him on was fairly short. He liked tits. They were amazing things — signs of divine love for all of mankind as far as he was concerned. A plump arse was also very nice. And pussies, once he finally got the chance to experience them, proved to be just as soft and lovely as their namesakes.

He was also fond of the sound of feminine laughter.

It had come as something of a shock to discover that masculine laughter could also be quite effective when it was uttered, soft and low, in his ear. The rough sting of a stubbled kiss and the taste of cock had joined the list immediately on the heels of that revelation.

It had shaken John. He had been forced to revise his point of view on a number of things, but eventually he’d learnt to accept it even though he still shied away from revealing it to many.

But now, apparently, he was a would-be monster fucker too.

Not that he wanted it to be like his dream. He didn’t want to be hurt.

He’d had, to be honest, quite enough of being hurt.

But the idea of being surrounded by Sherlock’s massive body — of being naked in the presence of sharp claws and horns and being safeguarded by nothing but Sherlock’s desire to not harm him — was its own kind of erotic.

And those were the pictures his mind was painting when he came silently, catching his ejaculate with the hem of his undershirt.

It took him a moment to notice that the entire flat was silent.

“John? Are you there?”

Sherlock was very near the bottom of the stairs.

“Yeah,” said John. “I was just listening to you. To the music, I mean.”

“Are you alright?” asked Sherlock. “You sound… not alright.”

“No. I’m fine. Just… The music you were playing. It was very… It was good. Who’s it by?”

“I wrote it, actually — when I had the urge to play. I wanted to know what it sounded like.”

“Well, it’s beautiful,” said John.

“Thank you,” said Sherlock as if he were testing the words out to ascertain their appropriateness to the occasion. “You should go to bed now. It’s almost four.”

“Yeah.” John grabbed the handrail and hauled himself up. “Goodnight, Sherlock.”

“Goodnight, John.”

  
  


“This just came,” said Sherlock. He laid a photocopy of a newspaper clipping next to John’s breakfast.

John picked it up and read the article. He suspected by the tone of the piece, that it had appeared in a rather sensationalist sort of publication. The gist of the story was that charges of murder against a woman in the U.S. had been dropped when the husband she had allegedly killed turned up at a logging camp in Canada with no memory of the violent death to which she had already confessed to subjecting him.

The husband told the authorities that his wife was “prone to odd flights of fancy,” which John thought was rich coming from a guy who had wandered off from his home near the Gulf of Mexico only to end up in Saskatchewan four months later.

“He disappeared and she assumed she must have killed him?” said John. “Could happen to anyone, I suppose.”

“Really, John?” sighed Sherlock.

John finished reading the article. “So — Mrs. Miller said she put a dog’s chain collar on Mr. Miller and fastened it to their bed. She then proceeded to beat him to death with a ‘fish club’ — whatever that is —”

“It’s basically a truncheon,” said Sherlock. “Deep sea fishermen use them to subdue large fish.”

John nodded. “— because she thought he was an impostor. Merryweather got the same treatment, or appeared to. I assume that means something.”

“It means that Irene Adler had nothing to do with killing him. It was Sonia Miller.”

“In…” John checked the date on the clipping. “…1951? That would explain why the crime scene was so clean, but it doesn’t explain why the body had been walking around for three decades.”

“For the same reason _I_ _’m_ still walking around.”

“Care to spell it out for me?”

Sherlock snorted softly. “That’s exactly what it is. It’s a _Stasis_ spell. _Stasis_ halts the subject’s metabolic processes, leaving them… somewhat alive for as long as a counter spell isn’t administered.”

“But not completely alive,” said John. “They’d be like you — no heartbeat, no need to eat…”

“I don’t even require air unless I wish to speak.”

“Why not just heal him? Can’t Faeries do that?”

“They can, if the subject’s not too far gone. Merryweather was decidedly too far gone.”

“Lucky he had a friend nearby,” said John.

“Friends.” Sherlock shook his head. “The Fae don’t have friends. They have people they can use. Merryweather, in particular, was a piece of work. Disguising himself as someone’s husband for his own entertainment was typical of him, really. Putting a spell on Mr. Miller to get him out of the way for a little while was short-sighted, but also typical. Merryweather was incredibly stupid. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say that Sonia Miller had enough of the Sight to see through his disguise and enough knowledge of folklore to devise a suitable revenge.”

“Any idea who did it?”

“ _Stasis_ requires a great deal of strength and skill. As far as I know, the only modern Faerie who’s capable of it is Moriarty.”

“The guy who cursed you?”

Sherlock clicked his tongue against his teeth. “That’s the one. And before you ask — this wouldn’t be the first time he’s involved himself in the type of crime that’s likely to come to my attention. He seems to enjoy it.”

“He’s like a cat leaving dead mice outside your door?”

“I suppose that’s one way of looking at it.”

From the way Sherlock was pressing his lips together, John gathered there were other ways of looking at it, but that one wasn’t entirely inaccurate. Just what happened between these two? And did John really want to get in the middle of it?

He hadn’t taken Sherlock up on his offer to let him go, so he supposed he did want to be in the middle of it.

“I assume he had some way to make Merryweather look like he hadn’t had the shit beat out of him,” said John.

“He made me look like this,” Sherlock reminded him. “That’s certainly within his power. He found Merryweather — I’ve no idea how — just after this woman essentially killed him, and offered to keep him alive — ish.”

“Out of the goodness of his heart?”

“No, of course not. He did it for control over Merryweather’s life — the most dangerous thing you can ever give a faerie. But Merryweather got nearly thirty years of borrowed time, so not a terrible bargain, I suppose.”

“Moriarty just owned him then?” asked John.

“He owed Moriarty his life from then on, literally,” said Sherlock. “Moriarty could take it whenever he pleased, without consequence. There’d be no need to get anyone else to do the dirty work, simply remove the spell and he’d succumb to his injuries.”

“And he used that to frame Irene Adler, because…?”

“I don’t know yet. She may have been the target all along, or she may simply have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. But I do know that it didn’t go as planned. He didn’t want the body to be found by other Fae until it had been embalmed.”

“To disguise any oddities? You said that most of Merryweather’s organs had failed.”

Sherlock nodded. “So it appeared. Merryweather was a breath from dying. Once _Stasis_ was removed, his organs didn’t have time to start back up before he succumbed to his injuries. A human, especially a very busy one, would hopefully ignore the unicorn in the room, and if that human didn’t — well, a little magical nudge would take care of it. But a faerie, seeing another faerie in that state, especially after that faerie had sounded a distress call? They haven’t solved the mystery, obviously, but they know something’s amiss. And whatever the plan was, that was not part of it.”

  
  


John was in his room when the texts came through. There were eight from Harry (and four missed calls), and three from the rental agency.

_Oh fuck,_ thought John. He should have signed up for the automatic payment. He wondered if it was too late to authorise it. He looked at the texts from the rental agency.

It was too late.

The texts from Harry ran the gamut from “Where the hell r u????” to “I put ur shit in a storage unit. U owe me ur first born child!!!!!”

Touchingly, she did express something akin to concern before she started calling him an irresponsible asshole. So there was that.

He tried to ring her, but the signal was out again, so he texted instead.

“Sorry. I’m fine, but mate’s in a bad way. Can’t leave now. Thanks for collecting my things. I’ll ring as soon as I can.”

Surprisingly, it went through. The “typing” icon came up straight away.

It stayed up for a long time, but no message appeared, so John finally finished stripping off his running gear, and went into the bathroom for a shower. When he came back out, there were two messages from Harry.

“Just tell me wats going on!!! I’m ur sister. I will come get u if u need me 2!!!”

And — “Fuck u John.”

But the signal was dead again.

“Sorry,” he whispered to the mobile, as he put it back into the bedside drawer.

That night, the violin woke him at 3:06. John couldn’t make out a tune, but he was pretty sure the mood of Sherlock’s playing was pure frustration. He hadn’t seen much of Sherlock today. After their conversation at breakfast, Sherlock had proceeded to lounge in his chair — legs stretched out in front of him, paws steepled on his chest — and stare at the spot where the mop board met the door frame for a few hours. By the time John returned from his run, Sherlock had disappeared into his sanctum.

John suspected that having a nice long brood hadn’t produced the results Sherlock was hoping for.

“Did you write this one too?” shouted John, as he took his seat on the step.

More cacophony was his only answer.

“Sherlock?”

The torturing of several cats went on.

“Okay fine! Hopefully there will be some earplugs in the bedside table by the time I get up there!”

Sherlock made one last drawn-out wail on the violin.

“Don’t go.”

John would have sat back down had he bothered to actually get up in the first place.

“So what’s up?” he asked.

“I’m tired of this game,” said Sherlock. John could hear him doing whatever it was he did when he put the violin away.

“I’m sorry I haven’t found the answer. To lifting the curse, I mean.”

“It was designed to be impossible.”

“Are all faeries such jerks?”

“Moriarty possesses an extraordinary level of evil,” said Sherlock. “But, they’re all… capricious, even the ‘good’ ones. And we’re like animals to them — pets, if we’re amusing enough, and vermin if we aren’t.” This was punctuated by the click of the latches on the violin case.

“Want to hear a story?” asked Sherlock. His voice was coming from near the doorway now, and John could hear him getting comfortable on the sofa.

“Bedtime story? To help me sleep?”

“Why not?”

“Right. Why not? Tell me a story then,” said John.

Sherlock cleared his throat. “Once upon a time...”

“Really? Once upon a time?”

“It’s a faerie story, John.”

“Right. Sorry. Carry on.”

“Thank you. Once upon a time there was a beautiful and intelligent young woman...”

“Intelligent by your standards or by normal ones?”

“Mine. _Do_ shut up. This beautiful and intelligent woman had somehow won the affections of a faerie.”

“By doing what?”

“Doesn’t matter. You can be their slave for a hundred years and they’ll discard you like week-old potato peelings or you can bake them a bran muffin and they’ll declare their eternal devotion. There is no rhyme or reason to any of it.

“Anyway, this faerie granted her a wish — to be used whenever she desired to use it. A future favour, and they don’t just hand those out at street carnivals, John. It was a Big. Deal.

“Over the years, the woman considered using her wish on a few occasions. She thought about using it to get into the university.”

“Why couldn’t she get in? I thought she was very smart.”

“It was a long time ago. Opportunities for women in higher education were not what they are now.”

“I see.”

“She thought about using it to wish back a lover who had left her – a man she loved dearly, and who she had thought loved her. But one day, he left with just a note saying it had been nice. She very nearly used it then, but in the end she decided she would rather have someone who loved her, even if it meant being with someone she loved less.

“And eventually she met that person — a man who thought she’d hung the moon and stars, and if she loved him a bit less than her old lover, well, she loved him enough. They married and had a baby.

“The baby was not much to look at, and certainly not personable, but he was smart – Yes, by my standards – so he had that going for him.

“Then she had a second baby.”

“And what was this one like?” asked John.

“Puny, quiet, and purple.”

“Heart condition?”

“Yep.

“Well, of course, she used the wish,” said Sherlock. “And the faerie lived up to his side of the bargain — after a fashion. See, she was supposed to have used the wish years ago to get her lover back. Her lover had been the faerie all along. It was some kind of test, to see if she would give up her dearest possession for him. Then he would reveal himself and declare his undying love, and she would fall into his arms, and they would live happily ever after, as one is supposed to do in faerie stories.

“But she fucked it up. And the faerie was stuck with granting her a wish that he really didn’t want to grant, but had to, because there are rules to these things, and he was magically bound to his promise.

“So he fixed the baby’s heart with a patch made of pure Faerie Magic. The child grew to be quite devastatingly handsome, truthfully, but also deeply, deeply… strange. He laughed at inappropriate things, got angry over nothing, thought of no one but himself. In the end, even his mother could no longer love him. Oh, she was fine with him as a concept, but not so much with the reality. She liked the story of her clever sacrifice that saved his life, but not the life that she had saved.

“He was smart. He was charming when he put his mind to it. He could get people to do things for him, get them to be infatuated with him for a little while, but no one could really love him, because inside, he was freakish — a monster.

“And that’s why I hate them. They meddle for their own ends and when you don’t play by the rules they set, and never tell you about, they punish you.”

“And that’s what happened to you? You broke some rule you didn’t know about?”

“Oh, worse, John. I knew _exactly_ what I was doing.”

  
  


Sherlock spent the next few days sulking. John knew Sherlock was sulking because, rather than sulk in his room, Sherlock was sulking all over the sitting room and, occasionally, the kitchen.

“Still no news?” asked John as Sherlock lay down on the sofa with his legs hanging off one side and his head nearly in John’s lap.

“Nope. I haven’t heard from Wiggins in a week, nor Lestrade since he sent me the clipping. Mycroft says I’m being paranoid — no one has seen Moriarty in nearly forty years, and he probably just got tired of me.”

“Seems unnecessary to add that last bit.”

“What are you watching?” Sherlock turned onto his side so that he could see the telly, pressing the top of one horn painfully into John’s thigh as he did.

“Ow! Budge up a little.” John grabbed a throw pillow and shoved it under Sherlock’s head so that the offending horn now rested gently across John’s leg. _“The Full Monty_ ,” he replied, trying to decide where to put his arm now that Sherlock’s head was in the way. He finally settled on laying it across the back of the sofa. “It’s a comedy.”

“What’s it about?”

“These guys decide to do a striptease act to raise money.”

“I don’t understand why someone would pay to see nude men,” said Sherlock. “Can’t they just go swimming or visit a gymnasium if they want to look at some fellow’s naked arse?”

“Well, they’d hardly allow women into the locker room.”

“Still, I’d think there are easier ways to see someone naked.”

“The point,” said John, “is that it’s sort of a bonding ritual for the people who enjoy that sort of thing.” He really wasn’t explaining it well, but then he’d never been particularly fond of strip clubs. “Women get to cut loose and admit that they have dirty thoughts and egg each other on. If it’s a traditional strip show, then the lads get to do some heterosexual posturing in front of each other — pretending they see dozens of tits every day of the week and twice on Sundays.”

“You’ve participated in this ‘bonding ritual?’”

“Sure. I was in the Army. Going to a strip club with your mates is practically an official part of indoctrination.”

“You didn’t enjoy it?”

“I didn’t hate it. Sometimes there’d be a dancer who caught my eye. I _like_ naked ladies, but… it’s a show, right? Nothing wrong with a show, it’s… what it is. It’s her job to pretend that she’s enjoying my company even though I’m clothed, and she’s not, and if that doesn’t point up the power dynamics of the situation, I don’t know what does. And it’s just not my idea of a great time.”

“Is that why you were so flustered the other day?” asked Sherlock. “Uncomfortable power dynamics?”

“I was afraid I’d offended you.”

“I wondered. It seemed rather odd — you being a doctor and all.”

“I think it’s safe to say that I’ve never had a patient present quite like you,” said John, chuckling.

“No, I daresay you haven’t.”

Sherlock went silent then, apparently watching the movie.

John sat still and resisted the urge to drop his hand across Sherlock’s shoulder.

On the screen Guy and… The Ginger One (John hadn’t really been paying attention to the movie, and it had been years since he’d last seen it.) awkwardly dragged each other through a window wearing nothing but tiny red pants. Guy tripped over a ridiculously small credenza and nearly fell into The Ginger One’s arms. They stared at each other for a couple of beats of clearly homoerotic longing.

But they didn’t kiss.

“Huh,” said John. “I thought they kissed there. I remember them kissing.”

“A wonderful example of the reliability of eyewitness accounts.”

“Is everything about crime with you?”

“No,” said Sherlock. “And buggery’s no longer a crime, thank God.”

They fell quiet again for a few scenes. Guy and Lomper (The Ginger One’s name was Lomper. John remembered as soon as one of the other characters said it.) held hands at Lomper’s mum’s funeral.

“Hey,” said John. “Sherlock?”

“Mmm?”

“The reason you never… had sex… Was it because of that? Because of the legal consequences?”

“Prison and hard labour are fairly effective deterrents, particularly when, like you, I’m not keen on purchasing a simulacrum of sexual interest in the first place. I never encountered an offer to partake in any activity that seemed worth courting years of blank walls and a copy of _Pilgrim_ _’s Progress_.”

“So you’re gay?”

“I believe that’s the currently popular term.”

“And you never met anyone you just… liked?”

Sherlock rolled his eyes.

“No,” said Sherlock. “And even if I had…” He appeared to be weighing several alternatives for ending that sentence. “…it wouldn’t have been worth the trouble.”

John didn’t know what to say to that. It had been legal for a man to shag a man his entire lifetime. Sherlock had lived through times when it had been a criminal act — one that brought horrific punishments.

No wonder Sherlock was convinced that “romantic entanglement” was pure liability.

“It can be nice, you know,” said John. “Especially when you’re into the other person.”

“And when that person is ‘into’ you?”

“Yeah. It’s nice.” _It’s cosy and exciting and funny and sometimes disappointing — but mostly very nice_ , thought John.

“If I ever come across a suitable candidate, I’ll keep that in mind.”

“I’m detecting sarcasm.”

“Do tell?” said Sherlock. “How often do you suppose homosexual men of an appropriate age and complementary temperament to my own walk through that door? I’ll tell you — not even once in one and one-third centuries, John. And even if they did — I can’t and they wouldn’t want to.”

“There’s me,” said John. “We get on pretty well and I’m not fussed by the age gap, if you aren’t. I mean, I’m not— you know…”

“—Gay, John. You’re not gay.”

“I’m… bisexual.” He was bisexual. He just wasn’t used to _saying_ it. “And there are things we could do — if you wanted.”

“Things?”

“Yeah.”

Sherlock sat up.

“You could overlook my monstrosity and do some ‘things?’ If I wanted.” He stood up and looked down at John. “Your compassion is appreciated, but no thank you.”

It didn’t sound like his compassion was being appreciated.

“Sherlock—”

“No, John.”

Sherlock turned and strode into the kitchen. A few seconds later, John heard his bedroom door close — ungently.

  
  


_It's late in the summer. John and Harry are walking… home, he thinks. It’s hot and they’re visiting their grandmother — their mother’s mother. They’re walking back to her house across a hayfield. He can smell new-mown hay somewhere. This field is probably going to be cut soon as well._

_All around them are tall grasses, clovers, and sky-blue dots of wild chicory. John reaches out and picks a few. He’ll take them back to his grandmother. It’s been years since he’s seen her, after all._

_[She’s dead.]_

_John frowns. Is she? Ahead, he can see her bending over in her garden_ _— pulling some weeds that have dared to pop up in her pansies._

_He picks more chicory flowers. Maybe she’ll make strawberries and cream for their dinner. She will sometimes if he and Harry gather the strawberries. It’s easy to talk her into too many desserts._

_Harry turns to him, her face contorted in horror._ _“John,” she says. “What are you doing?!”_

“ _Nothing. Just walking, same as you.”_

“ _Look behind you.” She points at the path they’ve made coming through the hay._

_There’s a trail of broken chicory stems._

_Each one is bleeding. Flies gather around them._

“ _What have you done, John?” whispers Harry._

_Shame floods his body._

John woke and unwound the quilt from his legs. He hadn’t broken out in a sweat this time, so he simply straightened his twisted blankets and turned his pillow over. He’d left his door open when he’d gone to bed, hoping to hear Sherlock playing his violin, but the flat was silent.

Just like it had been since yesterday afternoon when he’d suddenly decided to hit on Sherlock.

When he’d suddenly decided to bollocks up hitting on Sherlock.

Why had he been so _stupid_?

Let’s do _things_?! What was he thinking? He’d long ago lost track of how many women he’d pulled over the years. He was charming and funny, and women enjoyed his company. They seemed to enjoy his bed as well.

But he’d suddenly become tongue-tied when it came to inviting Sherlock there.

It probably didn’t help that when it came to doing _things_ with men, John had always been the invitee.

(”Come on, John. It’s situational. It’s not like we’re really homos.”)

(”Come on, John. Let’s blow off a little steam.”)

(”Come on… John was it? Nobody comes to a place like this for the shitty drinks.”)

John pulled the other pillow over his face.

Here he was, telling Sherlock that sex was nice when you were into the other person, but had he ever been with a man he actually _liked_?

Well, yeah. One.

(“Come on, John. Stay a little longer. I’ll set an alarm.” Sholto pulled him back down to the bed and kissed him. John nearly relented, but the possible consequences to Sholto if he were found cheating on his wife with a man under his command were more than John cared to risk.)

Music, sweet and low, came floating up the staircase. It was the tune Sherlock had written.

John took the pillow off his face.

Slippers, robe, and down the stairs. He sat, toes on the line and ass on the step, listening. It seemed to him that the music was less full of want and more full of promise.

Or maybe hope.

“What kinds of things?” asked Sherlock, over the music.

“I’m sorry, what?” asked John.

“What kinds of things would you like to do with me, John?” Sherlock’s voice was closer now. “If you could come down here, into this room, while I’m human, what would you do with me?”

“Oh.” John’s brain scrabbled for purchase. “I’d ask you to put the violin down first, I suppose.”

The music stopped.

“Alright.” Sherlock’s voice was farther away again and John assumed that he was indeed putting the violin back in its case.

He closed his eyes and tried to think of an answer because he knew Sherlock was going to ask again.

And again.

And again — until John had clarified to Sherlock’s satisfaction just exactly what he meant by “things.”

He heard the snap of the latches, and Sherlock’s voice near the bottom of the stair. “What next?”

“I’d… kiss you, I guess. If you’d like that.”

“How would you kiss me?” asked Sherlock. “I presume you’ve had ample opportunity to perfect your technique.”

“I’d… erm… I’d start with a simple kiss — short and… chaste — mouths closed. Then I’d check to see if that was… well-received.”

“Suppose it was.”

“I’d kiss you again — longer this time. I’d brush your lip with my tongue to see if you’d open your mouth for me.”

“Say I would,” said Sherlock.

“I’d put my hand on your face and—”

“Why?”

“Why would I put my hand on your face?”

“Yes.”

“So I could feel your skin. So I could could slide my fingers back into your hair. And I’d open my mouth and I’d… push my tongue into yours just a little, just enough to stroke the tip of your tongue.”

“Are you usually so… delicate?”

“Well, I’m getting to know you,” said John. “Figuring out what you like. Do you need coaxing or are you eager? If you’re into it, I’d probably suck your lower lip, maybe even nip it a little.”

“Because my mouth is attractive, I believe you once said.”

“I did, and it is. Very attractive.”

“Hmmm. Then what?”

“I’d put my arm around your waist. I’d pull you closer to me. I’d… enjoy the feeling of your body against mine. I’d splay my hand over your waist so that I could feel the play of your muscles and bones as you move. I’d press my fingers into the adipose tissue above your hip. I’d kiss you deeply, Sherlock, thoroughly. And when you needed air, I’d kiss your jaw and that gorgeous neck of yours.”

“You don’t know that my neck is gorgeous,” said Sherlock.

“I’m betting it is,” said John. He decided it was time for Sherlock to play this game too. “What would you do next?”

“You’re the one with the experience,” countered Sherlock.

“Yeah? Well, in my vast experience, if I’m doing all of this, my partner is responding. Otherwise, I’d question whether they really wanted it. Do you? It’s okay if you don’t.”

“No. I do.”

“So how would you show me that?” asked John.

“I suppose I’d kiss you back.”

“Yeah? Go on.”

“I’d probably like it if you bit my lip a little,” said Sherlock. “It would be a pleasant shock after you started so gently. My lip would be sensitive, full of blood from you sucking on it. I’d have your tongue and your breath in my mouth. Inside. I’d try to pull your tongue in further, hold it there. Taste it.”

“Where would you put your hands?” prompted John.

“Your backside.”

John grinned. “My backside?”

“I’d just grab that pert arse of yours with both hands and squeeze.”

John stifled a giggle. “Oh that’s… that’s excellent.”

“It would be better if we took off our clothes.”

“We can do that.”

“How would you get me out of my clothes?”

“Sherlock, all you wear is a dressing gown. I’d untie the bloody thing and reach in.”

“Efficient. What are you wearing?”

John looked down. “Slippers, a pair of pyjama bottoms, a grey t-shirt, and a dressing gown that I believe may be the Watson tartan.”

“Take them off.”

“Really?”

“Really, John. Take them off now.”

“Alright, but leave yours on.”

John pulled off his slippers and set them aside a few steps up. He stood and undid the tie at the waist of his pyjamas. He let them fall and stepped out of them. He placed them with the slippers.

He sat back down and slipped the dressing gown off his shoulders. He pulled his t-shirt over his head and put it on the pile with his other clothes.

“Are you naked?” asked Sherlock.

“Yeah.”

“You’re not too cold?”

“Maybe,” said John. “Maybe I’m a little cool. If I were down there, I really would untie your dressing gown and slip my arms inside and wrap them around you. Warm myself.”

“Would you kiss me again?”

“In a minute. First, I’d want to bury my face in the crook of your neck — kiss you there and breathe you in.”

“Are you always so deliberate?” asked Sherlock.

“Not always.”

“Is this on my account?”

“Partially, I suppose.” John thought for a moment. “If I could really be there right now, I’d want to make the most of it. I’d want to… use every minute to make you feel good… so you’d want to do it with me again sometime.”

Sherlock snorted. “I don’t think you need to be concerned about that point.”

Well, that was encouraging.

“I’d also really like to enjoy you. I like wanting someone — being hard for them, being so aware of them and the way they’re reacting to me. I’d want to touch you everywhere, Sherlock, feel you shiver and sigh and moan. Feel you pull me close and rub yourself against me.”

“I would. I don’t think I could help it.”

“It would be your first time, and I’d want to show you how… fucking sweet it can be. How messy and… fun… and profound sometimes. So, damn straight I’d take my time. I’d bury my fingers in your hair. I’d kiss your lips and your face and your neck. I’d put my mouth on your nipple, and I’d lick and suck until you cried out, and then I’d do the same to the other one. I’d get down on my knees and kiss your stomach and your ribs and those hollows next to your hip bones. I’d leave your dressing gown on, Sherlock, trapping the heat and the scent of your skin, and you’d know that I could smell you as I licked and bit the tops of your thighs. I would be breathing in the scent of your arousal, feeling the heat of it against my face. I’d drive every thought out of that magnificent brain of yours, if only for a second, and all you’d be able to think about is how badly you want to me to take your cock into my mouth.”

“John…”

“Do you like that idea?”

“Yes.”

“Are you hard, Sherlock? You can do that in this body, right?”

“Yes. This body has a heartbeat and breath and it’s perfectly capable of achieving both an erection and an orgasm. Why else would I choose this over your offer to do ‘other things?’”

“I think you’re underestimating those other things, but this is good too — brilliant, in fact,” said John.

“I’m so glad you approve.”

John could practically hear Sherlock’s eyes rolling.

“Tetchy, tetchy,” said John.

“Do you plan to just leave me hanging?”

“I rather thought you were doing the planning tonight, but no, I have no intention of not finishing you.”

“Get on with it then, would you?”

“Alright,” John chuckled. “I want you to sit on the sofa. You can keep the dressing gown on. Unless you enjoy sticking to the leather.”

John heard the “whuf” of Sherlock’s arse hitting the cushion. “Now what?”

“Are your nipples sensitive?” asked John.

“Compared to what?”

“Do you like it when they’re stimulated?”

Sherlock hesitated. “Yes.”

“Good,” said John. “I want you to close your eyes and touch them. I want you to imagine it’s me. Tell me what I’m doing, and I’ll do the same to myself.”

“You— You’re stroking them. Small circles, catching them with the tips of your fingers.”

“Mmm. Nice.”

“They’re getting hard, and you pinch them, roll them between your thumb and forefinger.”

John performed the motions Sherlock described, feeling his cock twitch in response to the jolts of feeling that sang along his nerves. In his mind’s eye, it was difficult for John to see Sherlock as completely human. Instead, his mental image was mostly of the Sherlock he knew slouched on the sofa, his dressing gown open like wings on either side of his body as he touched himself with long, sensitive fingers.

“You pinch them hard,” said Sherlock. “You pull— pull them.”

John didn’t know what thrilled him more, the intense sensation of pleasure tinged with pain, or hearing Sherlock’s voice catch like that.

“Then you lay your hands gently on them, petting them, soothing them. You run your hands down my body — exploring.”

“God, I want that, Sherlock. I want to know every inch of your skin.”

“Mmm,” Sherlock growled. “You stroke my thighs, smoothing the hair down and ruffling it back up. You push my knees apart — spread them wide so that you can put your hand between my thighs and cup my stones.”

John smiled at the old-fashioned euphemism and reached between his own legs. “They feel good,” he said. “Warm and heavy.”

“You caress them, coddle them. Your hands are strong enough to crush them, but I know you won’t. It’s… it’s exhilarating to… to…”

_To curl up with a beast and feel nothing but cared for and safe_ _— to feel like you can trust someone,_ thought John. “I know what you mean.”

“The hour’s almost over, John, and I want to climax before it’s too late.”

“Tell me how you touch yourself when you want to come.”

“Like we are now — one hand holding my bollocks and the other on my prick.”

“Firm? Soft? Fast? Slow?”

“Firm and slow,” said Sherlock.

“Okay. Firm and slow it is,” John replied as he began to stroke himself. “Sherlock?”

“Yes?”

“Listen to me — if I were there, on the lounge with you? Here’s what I’d do. I’d climb right into your lap, Sherlock. I’d have some lube, and I’d use it to get your cock nice and wet. And I’d straddle you and put that slippery cock right against my arsehole, and I’d slide right down on it, Sherlock. I’d kiss you — kiss your mouth and suck and bite your lips and I’d rub your nipples, and I’d ride you. With your hands on my arse, I’d ride you. I’d let you set the pace, and I’d take you, Sherlock. I’d be so hot and tight around your cock. And when I came, it would be all over your belly and your chest — all warm and slick. And when you came, Sherlock, it would fill me right up.”

“God, John.”

“Would you like that, Sherlock? Would you like me to ride your cock? Would you like to fuck me?”

“Yes. Christ, John. I want that.” Sherlock’s voice was tight with need.

“Me too. God, you’d make me feel so good.”

“I’m close. So close. I…”

“That’s right, Sherlock. Go over for me.”

Sherlock drew a long ragged breath. “Fffuuuck!” His voice hitched repeatedly so that it sounded almost as if he were sobbing the word. John continued to stroke himself, listening to Sherlock’s gasping slow down to almost normal.

“God, John.” Sherlock’s voice was breathy and shattered. “That was… Did you orgasm?”

John laughed softly. “No. I’d like to now though.”

“Yes! Please, John.”

John’s hand sped up. Slow and firm might work for Sherlock, but John preferred fast and light when no one had thought to tell him to bring lube. It didn’t take him long — the situation was so unusual and erotic that he had already been nine tenths of the way there.

Years of masturbating in situations where willful oblivion had stood in for actual privacy had made John very quiet, but years of experience with partners had taught him the value of feedback. He came with a series of three soft staccato “hahs.”

Once again, he found himself lying back on the stairs, catching his breath after an orgasm. He grabbed his shirt and mopped up.

“John?”

The timbre of Sherlock’s voice told John that he’d changed back into the form John was familiar with.

“Yeah?”

Sherlock’s head peeked around the corner, followed by the rest of him — his dressing gown tied firmly closed.

He stared at John for a rather gratifying moment, then held out his paw.

John took it and allowed Sherlock to haul him to his feet.

“Sorry,” said John, smiling a bit lopsidedly at Sherlock. “I know you like to be alone when you… transform.”

“No need to apologise. Turns out, it’s not as terrible as I thought it would be.”

“Good to know.”

“I feel like we should—”

“May I kiss you?”

“Er…. alright,” said Sherlock. “Of course.”

John was standing two steps higher than Sherlock, but he still had to go up on his toes to place his mouth against Sherlock’s.

The kiss was simple. Short. One might even say chaste.

“Thank you,” said Sherlock.

“My pleasure,” replied John.

Sherlock grinned, his eyes and everything in the surrounding area crinkling with pleasure.

“Goodnight, John. Sleep well.”

“Goodnight.”

Sherlock turned and clopped back down to the sitting room.

John grabbed his clothes and went upstairs to wash.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> John has a nightmare that's sexual in nature, so -- some sexually violent imagery. John and Sherlock discuss the sorts of punitive measures that were taken against men who were caught having sex with other men in the Victorian era. Blood, beatings, and attempted rape by deception are also mentioned.


	4. The Dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The flat is awfully accommodating.

“ _John, you see, but you don’t observe.”_

“ _What’s that supposed to mean?”_

“ _It means turn on a light, for Christ’s sake.”_

_John fumbles around, trying to find a lamp or the wall switch. He bangs his leg painfully against the bed._

“ _Ow!” shouts Sherlock. “Careful!”_

_John finds the wall and feels along it until he comes to the switch._

_The overhead light blazes to life — illuminates Sherlock lying on John’s bed, John’s quilt pulled up to his chin._

_The quilt is drenched in blood — litres of it._

“ _I’ve shown you all the pieces, John. Why can’t you put the puzzle together?”_

_John peels back the blood-soaked quilt._

_Sherlock’s body has been hacked into chunks._

John opened his eyes to another pale grey morning. He rubbed his face, trying to dispel the nightmare. For once, his bed showed no signs of him moving around in his sleep.

He went into the bathroom for a shower and a shave.

When John got downstairs, Sherlock was on his telephone. He nodded toward John.

“Yes, that’ll do, Wiggins,” he said. “The money will be there be by nightfall.”

He pushed the little cradle that held the earpiece, then let it up and spun the dial once.

“Geoff! Yes, of course. Listen, I need you to do a welfare check... Yes, I’m aware of your rank... Make something up... Fine, but make sure whoever you send knows enough not to compromise the scene... Yes, of course it’s a crime scene — why d’you think I’m trying to send a detective-inspector over? Good. I want to see all of the photographs as soon as possible... No, don’t have Mycroft deliver them.” Sherlock sighed. “I don’t know why you’re so chummy with him — he has all the warmth and charm of a pissoir in February... Have it your way. Tell him to dispatch three hundred quid to Wiggins before six.” Sherlock rattled off an address in Notting Hill and hung up. He flopped down in his chair.

“Break in the case?” called John as he filled the kettle.

“Wiggins found an address for ‘Avery Dain’ — that’s the alias Moriarty used when he commissioned the rose sculptures. He purchased the building in 1980. An agency has been paying the taxes and basic upkeep ever since.”

John went to the sitting room and stood beside Sherlock’s chair. “So you’re hoping that Detective-Inspector… erm?”

“Lestrade.”

“…Lestrade is going to find what, exactly?”

“I think he’ll find either an empty house or a carefully staged albeit very dusty ‘crime scene.’”

“I see, and what will an empty house tell you?” asked John.

“Not much.”

“And a carefully staged crime scene?”

“It will tell me what Moriarty wanted it to tell me.”

The kettle clicked off, and John went back to the kitchen.

He poured water into his mug and put a piece of bread into the toaster before returning to the sitting room.

“Which would be…?” he prompted.

“It would be useless to even hazard a guess before I’ve seen the evidence,” said Sherlock.

“And what if you just find some bloke named Avery Dain who made a very smart investment back in 1980?”

“Some bloke whose neighbours have never laid eyes on him?”

“Could just be an investment property. People do that.”

“It’s the only property in his name, John. No, this is tied in with the Merryweather case somehow. Moriarty likes these layered puzzles. He likes watching me peel the onion.”

 _Likes watching you cry, you mean,_ thought John.

The toaster popped. John leaned over and squeezed Sherlock’s shoulder before going to get his breakfast.

Sherlock followed him into the kitchen.

“This body really doesn’t bother you?” he asked.

John grabbed a plate from the cupboard. “I told you it doesn’t. I meant it.”

“I could snap you in two,” said Sherlock.

John blinked back the image of the Sherlock from his nightmare. “I know you could. But you won’t.”

“What’s to stop me?”

“Reason?” said John. “Compassion. The fact that you’re a good man.”

Sherlock snorted.

John set down the knife he’d been using to butter his toast. He reached out and took Sherlock’s paw. He brought it to his face and kissed the palm. It was smooth and resilient, like the pad of a cat’s paw. He lifted his chin and moved the paw down to his neck. He pressed Sherlock’s claws into the skin over the blood vessels on the right side of his throat.

Sherlock stared at John, lips parted as if he’d completely forgotten that breath was unnecessary. “John—”

“I trust you, Sherlock.”

Sherlock slid his paw back until it cradled John’s head. He bent and kissed him.

John licked a fleeting, tickling flicker along Sherlock’s lower lip. Sherlock didn’t open for John, but he did groan — a _basso profundo_ rumble that vibrated John right down to his toes.

Sherlock straightened, dropping his paw to his side. “You confound me.”

“I’m… not sure what to say to that.”

“It’s just that not many do,” said Sherlock. “None, actually.” He looked at John’s half-buttered toast. “Carry on then. I’ll likely be in my room for the rest of the day. I have some papers to look over.”

“Yeah,” said John. “Tonight?”

Sherlock smiled. “Tonight.”

  
  


John’s mobile rang just as he was about to get in the shower after his run. It was Harry.

“Hello?” said John.

“Holy fuck, you answered,” said Harry.

“It’s lovely to hear from you too.”

“What the hell is going on? And don’t tell me you’re babysitting some old army buddy in the effing Hebrides!”

“What should I tell you then?”

“The truth, John!”

“That is the truth,” or close enough for jazz, thought John.

“You’ve been gone for almost three months!”

“I know.”

“Nobody spends that much time comforting a friend unless they’re shagging him!”

John sighed.

“Oh my God, John! Oh my fucking God! You _are_ shagging him, aren’t you?”

“Really, Harry? What’s it to you?”

“What’s it to me?!” Harry’s voice was gaining in volume and pitch like the horn of an oncoming train. “I’ll tell you what’s it to me! I’ve been out to you for years, John Watson! Decades! I’ve sobbed on your shoulder during existential lesbian crises, and you never bothered to tell me that you’re…”

“Bi— bisexual,” supplied John.

“...Bisexual,” repeated Harry.

“There was never a good time to tell you.”

“There never is, John! And anyway, why do you have to drop everything and bugger off to the Hebrides to— to—” She snorted. “Ah, fuck.”

“Harry,” said John, his voice as gentle and contrite as he could make it, “I really am sorry. This came up out of nowhere, but I have to do this and I have to do it now.”

“You sound like you care about him.”

“I do.”

“Oh, you poor sod.” Harry snorted again.

“Goodbye, Harry. I’ll talk to you again as soon as I can. The service here is awful.”

“I noticed. Alright, don’t be a stranger.”

  
  


_He’s running through the fog — has been for… minutes? Hours? Ever? The sound of his breathing and the sound of his shoes on the street are loud in the stillness._

_He’s running toward (home) 221B._

_As he draws near, he sees a large shadow on the stoop._

_A woman is sitting there — his sister._

“ _There you are,” she says. “Thought I’d come meet your new boyfriend.”_

_Boyfriend?_

_Sherlock?_

_No. Harry’s not where she should be. She should be in the real city._

“ _You don’t belong here,” he says. “This isn’t right.”_

“ _What do you mean, I don’t belong here?! I’m your sister, John! Do I embarrass you?!”_

_A little._

_But that’s not the problem. She shouldn’t be here. Something bad is going to happen._

“ _How did you get here?”_

“ _I took the train.”_

_That’s when he hears it — laughter. It’s coming from the end of the street._

_When he looks, there are shadows moving there._

_He hears a child shout, the sound of traffic._

_Gunfire._

_The real world is coming._

_Everything at 221B is about to end._

He woke.

This time, the blankets had been kicked entirely off the bed and his shirt was stuck to his chest with sweat.

He got up and went into the bathroom, pulling off his clothes along the way, knowing they’d be taken care of just as he knew his robe and slippers would be waiting outside the shower when he was done washing off the salt and stink.

The spray was just a little warmer than usual tonight and he lingered under it for a bit before he remembered that he’d promised to meet Sherlock at three. He hadn’t looked at the clock when he got up, but he usually woke pretty close to the witching hour. He cut off the water and stepped out, setting his feet on the fresh bathmat.

The sound of the violin filled the hall outside the bathroom. He towelled off quickly and put on his dressing gown and slippers. He opened the medicine cabinet, willing the item he wanted to be there.

A small squeeze bottle of lube sat on the middle shelf. He pocketed it.

He had no idea if it was necessary, but he didn’t want another dry wank, if that was what Sherlock had in mind.

He was about halfway down the stairs when he saw that there was an object on the second step up from the tape line — the step he usually sat on — but he had to pick it up before he could tell what it was in the dim light.

It was a length of black silk. John stood there, running his fingers over the soft fabric, wondering what he was meant to do with it.

“John?”

He hadn’t noticed the music had stopped.

“What’s with the—?”

“Are you alri—?”

“I’m fine. Bad dream is all,” said John. “What’s with the… scarf?”

“It’s a blindfold,” said Sherlock.

“I see. Or rather, I won’t see, I guess.”

“I went over the rules of my incarceration. You can’t see me in my human form, but there’s nothing saying you can’t touch me… if you want.”

 _If_.

John tied the fabric securely over his eyes.

“You don’t have to, of course. I’d entirely understand if you didn’t—”

But John had already successfully navigated the last couple of stairs to the landing, and was now attempting to not fall face-first down the three steps leading down into the sitting room.

He felt a disturbance of the air in front of him and heard the rustle of silk. Sherlock took his hands. John had guessed correctly — Sherlock’s fingers were long and his grip was strong. John could feel the calluses on Sherlock’s fingertips against his right palm.

“Here’s the step,” said Sherlock, walking backward and drawing John into the sitting room. He stopped a half dozen steps from the stair. John estimated from the distance and the rug under his feet that they must be in the empty area between the coffee table and their chairs.

“May I…?” asked John, sliding his hands toward Sherlock’s elbows.

“Yes. Yes, of course.”

John continued the caress, gliding over the thick silk until he reached Sherlock’s shoulders.

“You’re taller than I thought you’d be, what with being born in the 19th century and all.”

“You seem taller as well, now that I’m two feet closer to the top of your head.”

“You’d barely have to bend to kiss me.”

“Is that an invitation?”

“In a minute.” John slid his hands across Sherlock’s collarbones and up his neck — which was quite the journey, John noted. He touched Sherlock’s ears — unremarkable, attached earlobes, a little sensitive judging by the breathy hitch that this exploration elicited. His fingertips were brushed by curls of silken hair and he surmised that Sherlock’s hair probably didn’t look very different in his human form than it did in his monstrous one. John touched Sherlock’s jaw and chin, stroked his mouth (which earned him a few more quickened breaths) and cupped his wide cheekbones. He ran his thumbs over Sherlock’s eyebrows and down the bridge of his nose. As far as he could tell, Sherlock’s face was unchanged from the face he was used to, except for being smaller in scale like his body

Sherlock had probably always stood out — taller than average, with an unusual, but attractive face. It was telling what Moriarty had chosen to either leave alone or exaggerate.

John dug his fingers into Sherlock’s hair — something he’d been wanting to do for a while now — and tugged Sherlock’s face closer to his own.

“Now the kissing?” asked Sherlock.

“Now the kissing,” John replied.

Sherlock opened for him this time and John didn’t hesitate. He slipped inside Sherlock’s mouth and tasted the warmth and sweetness there. Sherlock seemed hesitant at first, mainly just responding to John, but he quickly got the hang of it and took more initiative. And John stood in the dark and revelled in it. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d kissed someone who had practically no experience, and he was pretty sure that it wasn’t like this. He loved being Sherlock’s guinea pig. He loved having him experiment and catalogue every response.

John loved being the centre of Sherlock’s considerable attention.

Sherlock broke the kiss — giving them both a chance to breathe. “Aren’t you going to kiss my neck?” he asked.

“I can if you like,” said John, nuzzling his face into the crook of said neck. “Am I following a script?”

“It’s what you said last night.”

“Oh, is that what we’re doing? Thought a lot about last night, have you?” He pressed his lips to Sherlock’s pulse and kissed a line down to the base of his neck.

Sherlock made a growling humming sound only slightly less bestial than the one he’d made when John had kissed him at breakfast.

“Because the way I remember it,” said John, “you promised to grab my arse.” John found a spot on Sherlock’s trapezius muscle and tested out a gentle bite.

Sherlock gasped and put his arms around John.

John took his mouth from Sherlock’s neck and whispered, “Do it.”

And Sherlock put a hand on each half of John’s arse and squeezed.

John set his lips against Sherlock’s neck again, and added a bit of suction to the mix.

“Johnnn.”

“What did I promise next?” asked John, brushing his lips against Sherlock’s throat.

“You said… You said you’d open my dressing gown and warm yourself on me.”

John ran his hands down the lapels of Sherlock’s dressing gown until he found the belt tying it shut. He fumbled with the bow for a moment, but finally figured it out. He laid his hands on Sherlock’s chest and pushed the robe open a little before reaching under it and skating his hands along Sherlock’s ribcage until his arms were mostly under the dressing gown, his hands pressing into the flesh of Sherlock’s waist. He tucked his forehead against Sherlock’s shoulder and breathed. As he’d predicted, the garment had trapped some of the scent of Sherlock’s body — mostly the musky scent of male skin, but there was also a hint of something clean and herbal – _some kind of old-fashioned soap_ , John thought.

And John was definitely getting warmer.

He could feel the tension in Sherlock’s neck and in the shallowness of his breathing. He was nervous. Understandable — even if this hadn’t been his first time, it would’ve been the first time in more than a century. John would gladly have pleasured Sherlock all night, let him explore and experiment to his heart’s content until there was no room for nerves or fear or hesitation.

But they only had one hour.

And Sherlock wasn’t really the most patient sort.

John took one hand off Sherlock’s waist and placed it on his chest, fitting the hollow of his palm over Sherlock’s pectoral muscle. He rubbed gently, searching for the elusive male nipple. It only took a moment for it to stiffen against John’s caress. He took it between two fingers and rolled it.

“I believe I mentioned licking and sucking these next.”

Sherlock swallowed. “You did.”

John ducked and put his mouth to Sherlock’s nipple. He put his arm around Sherlock’s waist and pulled him closer, sucking softly, pulling the entire areola into his mouth and licking it with the flat of his tongue.

Sherlock wrapped his hand around John’s skull.

John’s hand found Sherlock’s other nipple. He pinched and tugged it in rhythm with the motions of his lips and tongue.

Sherlock whined, stuttering through ragged breaths, and kissed the top of John’s head. His cock nudged at John, brushing the dressing gown just below his navel.

“You said you’d rub yourself against me,” John reminded Sherlock before going back to teasing his nipple.

Sherlock worked his free hand between them and untied John’s belt. He took John’s cock and brought it into contact with his own, encircling them both with those long fingers of his.

It was John’s turn to gasp and whine.

Sherlock thrust slowly against John’s cock.

“God, that’s—” John couldn’t help but push into Sherlock’s grip as well. “—that’s… fuck… amazing, but we’re going to need lube and a spot to lie down, or at least brace ourselves, if you plan to keep that up.”

“Actually,” said Sherlock, stilling but maintaining his grip on them, “your description of… what came next was… thought-provoking.”

“You mean the part where I kneel and suck your cock?” John asked, almost innocently.

“Well, my imagination was more captured by the manner in which you described… being the active party.”

“You want to suck my cock?” John was surprised, delighted, and maybe a little amused at Sherlock’s growing boldness. He tried hard to not show the amused part.

“I have seen the act performed on many occasions. I believe I can do a tolerable job of it.”

John decided that he would pursue the very interesting topic of how Sherlock came to view blow jobs “on many occasions” some other time.

“I have no doubt that you can,” said John. “But I think having some furniture under us would still be more practical.”

Sherlock took John’s hand and led him carefully around the coffee table to the sofa.

“Sit,” said Sherlock.

So John sat — on the middle cushion, judging by the space on either side. Sherlock stood back, and for the first time since Sherlock had taken his hands on the stair, John wasn’t touching him.

He suddenly felt cold.

“John.” Sherlock’s voice came from just in front of him and to his right. “Spread your legs… er, please.”

So John spread his legs. He felt Sherlock’s naked calves brush the insides of his knees as he came to stand between them. He felt Sherlock take the two sides of his tartan robe and open it.

The image of Sherlock sitting in this spot, his silk dressing gown fanned open, sprang into John’s mind. He wondered what Sherlock was seeing. Was it as arousing to Sherlock as John’s vision was to him?

“God, John… you—”

He felt Sherlock’s breath against his lips an instant before Sherlock kissed him, all apprehension at the novelty of the act forgotten or maybe drowned by desire — John had no idea. He just gripped Sherlock’s biceps and held on, kissing him back with equal intensity until Sherlock left off kissing John’s mouth to kiss his neck and then his chest, moving down John’s body as he knelt between his legs.

“Closer,” said Sherlock, his voice rough with want, his hands pulling on John’s hips.

John slid himself lower on the sofa.

He felt Sherlock’s breath against his cock an instant before he felt his tongue. Sherlock dragged it, slow and slippery, from the base to the tip, before drawing away. John could feel Sherlock’s breath again, cooling the wetness. Then a series of feathery licks, this time with the tip of Sherlock’s tongue against the side of his cock. Then random gentle sucking kisses, some on his cock, some on his thighs, some on his stomach and balls.

John suspected that if he could have watched, this would have seemed annoyingly frivolous.

But he couldn’t see, and not knowing what Sherlock would do next, nor where he’d do it, had arrested every ounce of John’s attention. He found himself straining upward, in what he assumed was the direction of Sherlock’s mouth.

Sherlock put his hands on John’s hips, laying his arms over John’s thighs. He nipped the inside of John’s right thigh, causing him to gasp.

“How am I supposed to do everything I want in an hour?” asked Sherlock, his nose brushing John’s sack.

“There’ll be other hours, Sherlock.”

Sherlock was still and silent for a moment, his cheek still pressed to John’s thigh. Finally, he said, “Thank you,” and took John into his mouth.

And oh, that was… that was perfect — wet and warm and clasping.

And then Sherlock began to move, and once again, John found himself on the receiving end of Sherlock’s prodigious attention as he made a study of John’s responses to varying types of oral stimuli.

Whatever Sherlock hadn’t gleaned from observing the goings-on in 19th century bordellos, he was learning with John right now.

And it was extraordinary.

Even when things got a little clumsy, even when Sherlock discovered the hard way that it would require some practice before he could take John entirely, it was intensely erotic.

John reached down and laid his hand on Sherlock’s slowly bobbing head, winding his fingers through Sherlock’s hair.

John felt his skin start to flush — was Sherlock cataloguing that too? Filing it away for future reference in that massive mind of his along with the way John’s nipples hardened or how his lips were parted below the blindfold?

Or the taste and texture of John’s cock?

He was getting close. The familiar feeling of being drawn tight for release was creeping over him.

He strongly suspected that Sherlock fully intended to suck him to completion, but maybe because of the blindfold, John found that he wanted something more mutual than just Sherlock’s mouth pulling the orgasm from his body.

There would be other hours for that.

But this was the first hour — the only one they’d get.

“Sherlock. Hey, Sherlock.”

“Hmm?” said Sherlock, his mouth still stuffed with John’s cock.

“Could you stop? I’m… I’m close.”

Sherlock did stop.

“You don’t want me to—?”

“I want you to come up here,” said John. “I want to finish this… a different way.”

Sherlock was silent for a moment.

“Alright.”

Sherlock stood up, and John laid himself out on the couch with one foot still on the floor.

“Come on,” he said, gesturing toward where he thought Sherlock was. “Come lie on me.”

Sherlock knelt by John’s knee and stretched himself over John’s body.

“That’s it,” said John. “Put your cock by mine.”

John felt the brush of Sherlock’s knuckles as he positioned his cock as John had asked. He found Sherlock’s face with his hand and tilted his head up to kiss him.

The lube bottle dug into John’s hip. He really should have taken it out of his pocket before lying down. He wriggled his hand down between himself and the cushion and pulled it out.

“Here.” He held the bottle up.

Sherlock took it.

“What’s this?”

“Lube,” said John. “Er… lubricant… for sex.”

“I know the purpose of lube, thank you,” said Sherlock. “I’ve been meaning to run some tests on the various types.”

“I’d like to help with that,” said John, nudging Sherlock’s cock with his own.

“Yes, of course.” Sherlock sat back and John heard him snap open the bottle.

“How much?” asked Sherlock.

“A couple millilitres should do.”

“That’s… probably more than a couple.”

John grinned and held up his hand. “So give some of it to me.”

Sherlock placed a very well-lubed palm against John’s.

“Holy palmers’ kiss,” said Sherlock.

John swallowed as something squeezed his heart. “Come back down here,” he said, his voice rough with emotions that he didn’t want to examine right now. “I need a few of the unholy kind too.”

Sherlock laid his body back down on John’s and kissed him soft and deep.

John insinuated his hand between their bodies and took Sherlock’s cock in its slick grasp.

Sherlock followed suit.

“Like this?” whispered Sherlock, his lips still touching John’s.

John had no idea if Sherlock was referring to the kissing or the brilliant things his fingers were doing to John’s cock.

“Yes,” he whispered back. “Yes, Sherlock. Like this.” He kissed Sherlock.

“Like this.” He thrust himself into Sherlock’s fist.

“Like this.” He brought the head of Sherlock’s cock into contact with his own and slid them against each other.

Sherlock opened his hand and closed it again around both of their shafts, so that they glided alongside each other with every thrust.

John’s hand had become superfluous, and not knowing what else to do with it, he moved it up to Sherlock’s arse. He’d intended to cup Sherlock’s bottom and urge him on, but in the dark, John’s fingertips had landed rather more in Sherlock’s cleft than he’d meant.

“God, yes.” Sherlock pushed back against John’s hand.

“Like this?” asked John, setting his middle finger against the furled opening.

“Like this.” And with that, Sherlock pushed back until John was two knuckles deep before driving his cock against John’s again.

If he’d had a choice, John would have had his eyes open. He’d have feasted on the sight of Sherlock grinding himself to ecstasy against his body.

Or maybe he’d have simply watched Sherlock’s face as he came undone.

But he couldn’t, so John kissed him instead, muffling Sherlock’s ragged growling cries with his mouth — surprising himself when he, too cried out as he came.

Sherlock groaned as warm fluid spurted against his stomach, and shuddering, he added his own before collapsing with his head next to John’s on the arm of the sofa.

Sherlock lay on John, catching his breath. He shivered as John gently withdrew his finger and laid his hand against the eminantly cuppable curve of Sherlock’s arse. John brushed the curls back from Sherlock’s forehead with his clean hand. They lay like that for awhile, kissing occasionally.

John felt Sherlock lean up and look over his shoulder, presumably at the brass clock that sat on the shelf at the foot of the sofa.

“It’s five to four,” he said, pushing himself up and off John.

John took the opportunity to wipe his hand on his dressing gown. He felt Sherlock take his other hand and tug. He let Sherlock pull him to his feet.

Sherlock kissed him again.

“Thank you,” he said.

“There’s no need to thank me, Sherlock.”

“Nevertheless…”

Sherlock closed John’s robe over the mess on his stomach and tied the belt. Then he led John to the stair.

“Step,” he said, and put John’s hand on the railing.

John found navigating his way up while blinded easier than down. Once he hit the third stair past the landing, he pulled the blindfold off his eyes and blinked.

He felt suddenly very alone, standing on the cold, dim stair, his slippers forgotten somewhere in the sitting room. He wished that Sherlock had asked him to stay, to sleep with him. It occurred to John that he’d never seen Sherlock’s bedroom. He had no idea if it even contained a bed. He was pretty sure that sleep was another thing Sherlock didn’t require.

Still he found himself wishing for a… cuddle? A transition of some kind? A come-down rather than a letdown?

“Sleep well, John.” Sherlock’s voice had regained the quiet thunder quality that said he’d changed back into his monstrous form.

John nodded, even though he knew Sherlock couldn’t see him.

“Goodnight, Sherlock.”

  
  


“ _Help me, John.”_

_Sherlock is almost human, except for the curling horns framing his haggard face. His eyes are bloodshot, his lips dry and cracked. He has two or three days’ growth of beard._

“ _Help me.”_

_Sherlock is in his favourite chair — the leather case sitting on its arm, open._

“ _No.” Sherlock knows John won’t help him shoot up._

_But that’s not what Sherlock means._

“ _Please,” Sherlock whispers. “You’re supposed to find the answer. You’re supposed to save me.”_

“ _I don’t know how, Sherlock.”_

“ _Idiot.”_

_Sherlock stills, and John knows he’s failed._

_Sherlock is dead. He’s lost him._

John woke to another grey morning.

This was the third morning this week that John had dreamed of Sherlock dying while he stood by, powerless to stop it.

He kicked the covers off and rubbed his face. He picked up his mobile from the bedside table and checked it for messages. There were none, so he got up and began his day.

Downstairs, the wall above the sofa was plastered with photos of rooms decorated in what was once the cutting edge of modern fashion — white walls and dark wood furniture with bright cushions that were probably sitting in a museum somewhere a room or two over from Sherlock’s chair. It looked like something from _Architectural Digest_ circa 1979 except for the fact that it was entirely trashed and covered in a thick layer of dust. Sherlock had spent the last four days looking at them and muttering about the dire incompetence of Scotland Yard.

Well, that‘s what he’d done during the day.

At night, he’d had sex with John.

Sherlock, it turned out, had witnessed a pretty indecent range of debauchery back in the day, and was keen to try some of it out. John, whose experience with same-sex fucking had been mainly of the quick-and-dirty variety, was more than willing to participate. So far, he’d ridden Sherlock in Sherlock’s favourite chair, eaten Sherlock out and fucked him bent over said chair, spent nearly the entirety of one of their hours on the sofa, _en soixante-neuf_ , as Sherlock charmingly put it, and sat on the sofa with Sherlock draped over his lap and fucking his thighs while he milked Sherlock’s prostate (so far, John’s favourite).

This morning, however, Sherlock was nowhere to be seen. John filled the kettle and wished for a bit of currant jam for his toast. He found it in the cupboard next to the tea tin.

He was nearly done with his breakfast when he heard Sherlock’s voice coming from somewhere in the neighbourhood of the fireplace.

“Good morning, John.”

John quickly washed down his last bite of toast with a swig of tea and went into the sitting room.

“Morning, Sherlock,” he said, looking around for the source of the voice.

“Sleep well?”

“Fairly.”

“Liar. I heard you moaning this morning, and I know your happy moans from your unhappy ones now.”

John spotted the silvery rose sitting on the mantle.

“Mycroft’s been by, I see,” he said, gingerly prodding the rose. It was hot from the magic flowing through it. “Sorry I missed him.”

“Two lies in one morning, John?”

Sherlock was behind him now, just coming through the kitchen.

“ _Stop_ ,” he added, shutting down the rose’s magic.

“Where was it?” asked John.

“In the study. You can just make it out next to the silver frame around a portrait of that American actress.”

John knew the portrait Sherlock was referring to. “Louise Brooks,” he said.

Sherlock shrugged dismissively. He and John had pored over the photographs of Dain’s “home” for hours. What Sherlock had at first assumed were photographs of Dain’s acquaintances turned out to be artworks featuring celebrities. If it weren’t for John, Sherlock would still be trying to puzzle out who some of them were, but Sherlock wasn’t terribly thrilled with being dependent on John’s knowledge of pop culture.

“So this proves that Irene Adler was in contact with Moriarty?” asked John.

“I think there was little doubt of that,” said Sherlock. “What it proves is that he wanted me to know it. He didn’t need it in Notting Hill — he knows how to work a telephone, after all.” Sherlock wandered over to the sofa and stood there looking at the photographs. “Just like he wanted me to believe that someone had ransacked his home.”

“You don’t think someone just, you know, ransacked it?”

“There are only two people who knew that he supposedly lived there — Merryweather and The Woman. Merryweather wouldn’t have dared to cross him unless he was cornered, and The Woman wouldn’t have been so sloppy. She’d only have come looking for something if she knew it was there and how she could access it. No, this is all unquestionably staged for my benefit. And if Lestrade ever gets back to me with the information I requested…” Sherlock looked at the brass clock. “…over three and a half hours ago, I’ll know what Moriarty’s real intentions were.”

John also looked at the clock. Sherlock had rung Lestrade before five that morning.

“Do you ever sleep?” asked John.

“Rarely,” said Sherlock, still staring at the photos with his arms crossed over his chest. “I used to — to make the time pass — but I slept for a year once, and… I didn’t like it.”

“A year?”

Sherlock dragged his attention from his improvised crime mural to John’s incredulous face. “The flat is never too hot or cold. I’m never hungry or thirsty. I never have a full bladder. And that year did pass quickly. It seemed to me that I’d barely slept a few hours.”

“But you didn’t like it? Even though it meant escaping this…” John gestured at the entire flat. “…for a time?”

“It frightened Mrs. Hudson. Since then, I only sleep when I absolutely can’t stand it anymore. And I always set an alarm.”

That was… a lot to process. That Sherlock would give up the comfort of sleeping away part of his… sentence so that Mrs. Hudson wouldn’t be frightened — and it must have been frightening, since Sherlock didn’t even breathe most of the time and probably not at all when he slept — that said something.

And then there was the fact that he was just sitting up after… their hours together, but sending John off to bed before he transformed because — why?

“Could I stay up with you then?” asked John (well, blurted John). “After we have sex? Rather than just going straight back to bed?”

Sherlock scowled. “Why?”

“Why?” _Wasn_ _’t that obvious?_

“Yes. _Why,_ John? You know I’m useless for further amatory pursuits when I’m like this.” He swept his paw down his body.

_Further amatory_ _…? Did Sherlock think that John was only in it for the sex? Was that all Sherlock wanted?_

“Is this just… fucking then?” Why was he angry? It wasn’t as if they were dating. But there it was, that familiar pull to let the hurt and confusion burn away in clean incandescent rage.

“I don’t know, John. Is it?” Sherlock’s voice had gone positively arctic.

John could feel his hand trying to curl into a fist.

He wasn’t going to do this. He turned and headed toward the door.

He stopped halfway there. He just had one thing he needed to say first.

He turned back to Sherlock and said, “Not to me, it isn’t.”

And with that, he continued toward the door.

His hand was on the knob when he felt Sherlock’s paw touch his arm.

“Nor to me,” said Sherlock.

John looked up at Sherlock’s face. He saw nothing but sincerity there.

“I mean… the sex is brilliant,” said John. “I just want…”

Sherlock nodded. “And I, as well,” he said, and bent low to kiss John.

  
  


“Wonderful as usual, Mrs. Hudson.” John sat back in his chair, cradling his wine glass with its last few sips of Burgundy.

“Thank you, dear.” She stood up and moved the plates to the sink. “But I can’t take full credit tonight. I’m afraid I got distracted and utterly burned the roast. I let the kitchen fix it.”

John grinned. “I wouldn’t blame you if you let the kitchen do everything.”

“I do most of the time when it’s just Sherlock and me, but when there’s company — well, I like cooking, but I like it much better when I’ve someone around to appreciate it. Mr. Hudson, for all his many faults, always liked my cooking.”

“What was he like? Mr. Hudson?” asked John. It was the first time she’d mentioned him.

Mrs. Hudson came back to the table with a couple of dessert plates and a chocolate pudding. “He was very charming and a fine figure of a man, as we used to say. But he liked to gamble, and he got in with the wrong sort.”

“The wrong sort?”

“The Fae, dear,” she said, putting a serving of the pudding on a plate and handing it to John. “He had a touch of the Gentry from his father’s side, and it gave him the Devil’s own luck. We were married for nearly a decade before I realised that he supported us entirely with his winnings. I’d thought him an independent gentleman…

“Well, anyway — eventually every card party and gaming hell in London had blacklisted him. They suspected him of cheating, which he was only doing in the loosest sense of the word, but there you are. He was getting quite desperate, afraid we’d have to move to some locale where he was unknown. An acquaintance mentioned that there was a club that would admit him — unnaturally lucky or no.

“Of course, that gentleman turned out to also be part faerie. The club was made up of them, so it was a much more even playing field. My Jonathon turned out to be not very good when his advantage was gone.”

“He lost everything?” asked John.

“He lost _me_ ,” replied Mrs. Hudson. “A high-stakes game with the owner, a full-blood faerie named Orson. He should’ve known better. He _did_ know better, but he did it anyway. He put his ‘dearest possession’ up against a small fortune and lost. Orson argued that, given what British law said about the status of women at the time, I was Jonathon’s dearest possession. The Court was inclined to see it his way. Sherlock found evidence that Orson had incorporated spells into the construction of the building that housed the club, and that he’d been using it for years to cheat the demi-Fae of whatever they had that he happened to fancy.

“That didn’t really matter to the Fae, of course. Any humans, Fae blood or not, who entered such an establishment knew they were at a disadvantage, and no one was forcing them to play. But Sherlock brought forth another faerie who declared that she’d lost a favourite brooch to Orson when playing in his club. That changed their tune — they declared that Orson was guilty of cheating and that any and all debts incurred in his establishment were null and void. I was free to go. But Jonathon, in the meantime, had thrown himself into the Thames. When all his other debts were settled, I was left with nothing but this house.”

“That’s… wow,” said John.

“It is quite the tale, isn’t it?” said Mrs. Hudson.

“I’m sorry about Mr. Hudson.”

“It was a long time ago, and the blush came off the rose about the time I found out he’d been lying to me. Staking me in a card game was beyond the last straw. I’d probably be dancing my shoes through in some faerie hall in the Summerlands if it hadn’t been for Sherlock.”

“How did you meet him?”

“One of the demi-Fae who’d known my husband recommended him to me. Said he’d argued a few cases before the Court and won — which, as I said, is no small feat.”

“And how did he get involved with the Fae?” asked John. “Do you know?”

“I don’t know the details,” she replied. “I just know that he’s always had the Sight. I gather that he solved a few cases no one else could because he was able to see the hand of the Fae in them. Eventually, he earned a reputation in certain circles, and it… ‘snowballed’ from there.”

“Do you know how he met Moriarty?”

“I don’t, I’m afraid. The first I heard of that one was when he came here to drag poor Sherlock before the Court. He’s mad though. I can tell you that.”

  
  


Sherlock made good on his word that night. When John came downstairs (after pausing to put on the blindfold, of course) Sherlock led him through the kitchen and into his bedroom.

It was the first time they’d made love in a bed.

 _A really large bed_ , John noted. He kept thinking he must be nearing the edge of the thing, but no matter how much rolling around they did, he never did find it. Afterwards, when Sherlock pulled the blindfold off with one claw, John could see that the bed had to be nearly three metres square. There was no footboard, just a dark wooden headboard, against which Sherlock was sitting with his legs folded back and to the side opposite John. He had already put his robe on and had arranged it loosely over his body, covering his nakedness.

John chose not to comment on that.

“Is your bed always this big? Or did the flat haul this out for a special occasion?” asked John

“It’s the one piece of furniture here that fits me,” said Sherlock. “Probably because I don’t truly need it.”

John nodded. This was the first time he’d seen this room. It wasn’t what he’d expected, although he couldn’t really say that he’d expected anything in particular. The walls were covered in green damask wallpaper. There was yet another bookcase and what appeared to be a large liquor cabinet. Both were filled with Sherlock’s usual assortment of oddities. A floor lamp and a coat tree bearing Sherlock’s collection of silk dressing gowns rounded out the furniture. There was a framed poster of the periodic table that John could’ve sworn was identical to the one in his sixth form chemistry classroom.

It was just not as assertively weird as the rest of the flat. And it was certainly neater.

“It’s very neat in here,” said John.

“The flat is rather more aggressive about tidying this room,” said Sherlock.

“I wonder why?”

“Probably because I am rather more aggressive about messing it up.”

John raised his eyebrows.

“I’ve been known to vent my frustration on the furnishings,” explained Sherlock.

“Yeah, well — you have a lot to be frustrated about.”

Sherlock didn’t answer. He just looked at the room as if picturing the damage he’d done to it over the decades. John imagined he could inflict quite a bit, what with those claws and hooves. And the horns — if Sherlock banged his head on the wall, it was the wall that would suffer.

“It was childish,” said Sherlock, picking up the ties of his dressing gown and attempting to tie them.

“Here,” said John, taking the ties and fastening them in a firm slip knot. He sat next to Sherlock against the head of the bed and drew the covers over his lap.

Nudity didn’t fuss John, but if Sherlock was going to cover up — and obviously he was going to cover up before even removing John’s blindfold — perhaps it would be appropriate for John to follow suit.

Truthfully, John had thought there’d be more… touching and pillow talk. That clearly wasn’t happening, and now that he thought about it, he realised that he’d been perhaps a little delusional to expect it.

He fell back on the old standby.

“How’s the case?” he asked.

“Oh,” said Sherlock. “I solved it a few hours ago.”

“A few hours ago?”

“Well, I solved it before that, of course, but Lestrade rang last night with the final proof while you were at dinner. They found a wall safe at the Dain residence containing Ms. Adler’s ‘insurance.’”

“Moriarty stole the photos then, not Merryweather?”

“Undoubtedly. Moriarty blackmailed her into being his accomplice. It explains why she took Merryweather on despite the fact that he was decidedly unlike her usual clientele. She collared Merryweather, then handed the leash to Moriarty. Moriarty walked him to the train station, forced him to strip, removed the _Stasis_ spell, and disposed of the ‘evidence’ where the police would be sure to find it. The only person who could connect him to Merryweather, the only person who knew Merryweather had anything to do with any of it was The Woman — and he framed her for the murder by making it look as if Merryweather was the victim of _his_ victim.”

“Alright, but then why would Moriarty want to fake his own death?” asked John.

“I don’t know for sure. He could be trying to escape enemies among the Fae. He’s always skated close to the edge of what’s acceptable in their society. He may finally have crossed the line. Or perhaps the whole thing was merely for my benefit. It would amuse him to watch me despair, and his magic powers this dimension and all of the enchantments therein. Were he to die, the spells would eventually degrade.”

“This takes a lot of juice to run, does it?”

Sherlock smiled. “It required a great deal of ‘juice’ to create, but once in place, the pocket dimension greatly reduces the cost of maintenance. Mycroft is another story. He lives in the mundane world. Once he’d managed to create his brother’s keeper spell, Moriarty was forced to supply the magic for that as well, and that does make a noticeable dent in his power.”

“Wait. If Moriarty really did die though, the rest of the Fae would just let you and Mrs. Hudson rot here?”

“I’d send her out, of course,” said Sherlock. “But yes. I’m nothing to them but a thorn in their side — a pest to be gotten rid of. I suspect most of them can’t understand why Moriarty bothered to curse me. I’d be long gone by now if he hadn’t.”

John didn’t know how to say that he was glad he’d had the opportunity to meet Sherlock without it sounding as if he weren’t simultaneously appalled by what Sherlock had suffered.

“I don’t understand the roses, though,” said John. “As you pointed out, telephones would have made much more sense.”

“They were for me.”

“For you?”

“If you remember, the copper rose was found with some clothing in a trash can near Merryweather’s location,” said Sherlock. “The clothing was identified as belonging to Merryweather by fibre analysis. But if Merryweather hadn’t summoned the Fae, the rose and the collar would have been the only clues as to his identity. The collar was immediately traceable to The Woman, and no doubt her matching rose helped seal her fate. She could have denied knowing the deceased, or given the police the obviously fake name of Virgil Merryweather, a person with no official past — it wouldn’t have mattered which. The roses would have taken longer to unravel, presumably buying enough time for Merryweather’s body to be cremated, but eventually someone would have enough knowledge of the Fae to notice the blatant faerie symbol stamped on them and trace it to one of the few faerie artisans working in London. And he would have identified the person who commissioned the roses as Avery Dain — who both Lestrade and I already knew to be Moriarty, himself — and that would have led on to the apartment he’d staged to look as though someone had frantically searched it. It was a little trail of breadcrumbs for me to follow.”

“And he wanted to be sure you became involved.”

“As I said — he wanted me to believe he was really gone and that the magic sustaining all of this…” Sherlock waved a paw in the general direction of everything. “…would be gone soon. He wished to push me into the only out I have other than finding someone to break the curse.”

“Can you tell me what that is?”

Sherlock shook his head and smiled sadly at John.

“He promised to ‘burn the heart out of me.’ I can merely speculate as to his exact meaning. However, I can say that he would allow that route only after he was sure I’d suffered adequately.”

Because Moriarty considered Sherlock’s suffering under the curse inadequate apparently.

“Is that why you never took it?”

Sherlock looked at John with that intent and uncanny gaze of his.

“Until you walked into this flat, John, I thought the second option only slightly more likely than the first.”

John knew this was another clue — another breadcrumb in the trail Sherlock was leaving for him. The trail John was too thick to follow. It was like trying to create a forgery of an old master with nothing more than a semester of Art Appreciation.

He knew enough to know he was doing a piss-poor job of it.


	5. The Vow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry Watson has an eye for fashion.

“ _It’ll be fine, John. We need you.”_

“ _You don’t understand. There’s nerve damage. My hand—”_

“ _We’re short staffed, John. You can do it. You have to.”_

_So far, the surgery has gone well. Maybe they were right. But then his hand shakes. An artery bursts. There’s so much blood. He calls for assistance, but he’s alone — not even an anaesthesiologist, and the patient moves and John is trying to adjust the drip of drugs into his veins._

“ _John,” says Sherlock, bleeding out on the operating table. “Help me.”_

_This is wrong. Why is Sherlock here? Sherlock doesn’t belong here._

_He considers this. This could be just a dream._

_Then he wouldn’t be killing anyone._

_Everything could be…_

…okay. John tested his current reality. He was naked except for the blanket pulled up to his waist. He was definitely in Sherlock’s huge bed. There was no sound of IV pumps or heart monitors — just the rustle of papers and the sound of Sherlock’s calm, even breathing.

Just the relief of one less death.

John shifted and snuggled tighter into Sherlock’s side.

“Awake?” asked Sherlock.

“Mmph,” answered John.

Sherlock set the book he’d been reading on the bedside table and wrapped an arm around John’s shoulder. And he stopped pretending that he needed to breathe.

They’d been sharing Sherlock’s bed, more or less, for nearly a fortnight.

The second night in Sherlock’s bedroom had been much like the first — John went to bed in his own bed and got up when he heard Sherlock playing.

“You know,” said John, feeling his way toward Sherlock. “I kind of miss hearing you play.”

“You have to make a choice — music or sex. I can’t do both.”

“Really?” John found Sherlock and took hold of his the front of his dressing gown. “Because, last I knew, most of the action part of violin playing takes place above the waist.” He pulled the garment open and knelt at Sherlock’s feet. “I’m out of the way down here, yeah?”

John could hear Sherlock swallow. “Alright.” Sherlock began to play again — something slow and… _introspective,_ John thought as he took Sherlock’s cock into his mouth and sucked it with equally slow strokes, lost in a space where there was only music and sex.

To his credit, Sherlock managed nearly 20 minutes of playing before he set the violin down and put his hand on John’s head. John suspected he was using the other to brace himself on his chair. A moment later Sherlock came, growling John’s name.

They talked until it was John’s usual wake-up time both nights. On the third night though, lack of sleep caught up with John and he’d conked out within five minutes of orgasm.

At approximately 5:30, he woke from another nightmare to a motionless and silent Sherlock. Still only half-awake, he’d immediately attempted to perform CPR — and broke Sherlock’s sternum on the first, and only, compression. John had nearly abandoned the whole idea of sleeping with him at that point, but Sherlock assured him that the fracture had healed almost immediately.

“There’s no lasting harm done, John.”

“Let me see.”

Sherlock bared his chest and let John examine it.

There weren’t even any bruises.

“Alright?” asked Sherlock.

“Alright,” John conceded.

“Excellent reflexes, though.”

“Shut up.”

Sherlock now took the precaution of breathing and moving around a little while John slept. It seemed to have the added benefit of making John’s nightmares less intense. John liked the sounds of Sherlock’s slow, deliberates breaths coupled with the quiet rustling of his dressing gown and the pages of his book. They were soothing — like the sound of nighttime traffic after a holiday in the country.

On the fifth night, Sherlock had invited John to sleep the night through in his bed — “Not every night,” said Sherlock. “Just — it could be pleasant… now and again.”

It was pleasant. Especially when Sherlock woke John, saying softly, “John, it’s after three.”

John thought that explained the presence of an erection being pressed into the cleft of his arse.

“Where’s the blindfold?” asked John, keeping his eyes tightly closed.

“If it doesn’t bother you, I thought I’d just leave the lamp off. It’s pitch dark in here without it.”

John looked around. Except for the faintest silvery strip above the heavy curtain drawn over the window, not even a shadow could be seen.

“Alright.”

So Sherlock had left the lamp off, and they’d made love by touch alone. It wasn’t the same as when only John was blind. It made locating the lube far more difficult, for one thing.

But it also placed them on an equal footing. Not that John hadn’t found his former “disadvantage” more than a little erotic. Knowing that Sherlock could see him responding — that Sherlock could see the gooseflesh and the sex flush and the tip of his tongue when he absently licked his lips, and his expression, or part of it, when he came, while John saw nothing? John had loved handing over that power, particularly because there was no other choice if he’d wanted to fuck Sherlock.

And, Christ, he’d wanted to fuck Sherlock.

But without light, Sherlock was also forced to feel his way.

And John couldn’t remember ever experiencing anything as purely sensual as Sherlock’s hands mapping his body.

John’s other senses felt bigger in a way that they hadn’t while he wore the blindfold. He no longer had the anchor of knowing that Sherlock could see. They were at sea and navigating the dark together.

John hadn’t slept in his own bed since.

Sherlock had come around to accepting full and prolonged physical contact despite not understanding why anyone would even want it while he was all horns and hooves.

And John, who was touch-starved and battle-worn and so very exhausted with keeping a stiff upper lip, had taken full advantage of it.

So here they were — John, languid in that way one is when one has just woken up with no particular need to pee or desire to eat or place to be, pressed into Sherlock’s side, his face smashed against the skin over Sherlock’s ribs and his leg thrown over Sherlock’s thigh — and Sherlock, with his paw placed carefully on John’s shoulder so as not to prick him with his claws.

“Why are you warm?” asked John. “You have no metabolic processes.”

“Magic,” said Sherlock.

“That’s it? Just — ‘Wizards did it?’”

“Faeries did it. I already explained to you that magic generates heat. Don’t you listen at all?”

“I do,” said John, moving his leg slightly to find a more comfortable position. The coat of hair that covered Sherlock from the waist down had become ruffled and was prickling the inside of John’s thigh distractingly. “I just didn’t realise there was quite so much energy involved. It seems like a lot of trouble to go through just to punish someone for not saying ‘Thank you.’”

“I did something far more ungrateful than just forget to send a note,” said Sherlock. “But you’re correct. It is a great deal of trouble. Apparently, I’m worth pulling out all the stops.”

“I’ll buy that.” John kissed the nearest of Sherlock’s ribs.

Sherlock harrumphed.

“World’s only consulting detective,” John reminded him, “for 150 or so years.”

“I was the world’s only consulting detective for about a dozen years. Since then, I’ve been lucky to get a handful of cases per decade and then it’s only because they involve the bloody Fae.”

John could actually hear him pouting.

“Sherlock, quit trying to get me to tell you how extraordinary and brilliant you are.”

“Really? You think so?”

John just laughed and tightened the arm he’d flung across Sherlock’s ribs, pulling himself closer to Sherlock.

“John?”

“Hmm?”

“Are you… tumescent?”

“You’re just now noticing?” asked John. “I’ve had a hard-on pressed against your hip for a quarter hour now.”

“ _You_ _’ve_ been pressed against my hip for half the night,” said Sherlock. “It must’ve happened gradually — the proverbial frog being boiled alive.”

“Does it bother you?” asked John.

“I just don’t understand _why_.”

“Why I have a hard-on!?” asked John. “It’s morning. I’m in bed with you. I’m touching you. You turn me on. It’s a pretty natural response given the stimuli.”

“I ‘turn you on?’”

John leaned up on his elbow so that he could see Sherlock’s face. “Sherlock, we make love every night. Obviously, I think you’re incredibly attractive.”

“When I’m _human_ , John. We… take our pleasure together when I’m human. How can you find this body attractive?”

Oh, this conversation had the potential of ending very badly. Even John didn’t know whether his attraction to Sherlock was the result of latent teratophilia or if he was only an aspiring monster fucker because Sherlock was the monster. There was no use in finding a comforting lie, though. Sherlock would know.

“I just do. Maybe I have a thing for monsters. Maybe I have a thing for you no matter what body you inhabit. Maybe it’s both or neither. But I’m attracted to you — just like this. If I didn’t think it would freak you out, I’d try to convince you to make love with me right now.”

“You know I can’t,” said Sherlock, but the ice hadn’t crept into his voice, so John took that as an encouraging sign.

“You can’t get an erection, and presumably, you can’t ejaculate. But we can—”

“Do ‘other things?’”

_There was the frost._

John felt a fire kindle in his chest. He was angry, but not the dangerous kind of angry — he hoped — just a burn-away-the-deadfall sort of angry, not a demolish-the-whole-damn-forest sort.

Just enough heat to maybe take the edge off Sherlock’s cold.

“Yeah, Sherlock. Other things. We could do anything that gives us pleasure that doesn’t require you getting it up. Maybe there’ll be orgasms. Maybe we’d just make each other feel good for awhile.”

“I don’t even have hands to touch you, John.”

John picked up Sherlock’s paw and set it back down on his hip. “These are fine.”

Sherlock stroked John’s thigh with the pad of his paw. “My claws are sharp, and I don’t always control them well. Practically every surface in this flat has repaired itself from scratches.”

“I have a well-stocked first aid kit.” John looked pointedly down at his scarred chest. “And you wouldn’t exactly be marring a pristine canvas here.”

“I still don’t want to hurt you.”

“We can stop any time you want.”

“Even now?” asked Sherlock.

John nodded and sat up, pulling his legs underneath him. “Even now.”

Sherlock smiled and held out his paw. “Come back. I’ll say ‘stop’ if I really want you stop.”

John smiled back at him and leaned his cheek into Sherlock’s paw. Sherlock brought John’s face closer to his own and kissed him.

“Well, it seems that kissing still feels good to you.” John pressed his lips to Sherlock’s — licking along his lower lip, requesting entrance, and once that was granted, kissing Sherlock senseless.

“Yes,” said Sherlock, when John came up for air, “that feels… good.”

John laid his body down beside Sherlock’s, sliding his feet back under the covers until they touched Sherlock’s ankle.

He kissed Sherlock again and worked his fingers under Sherlock’s horn to stroke his jaw and the curve of his earlobe.

Sherlock responded with a low growling hum of approval.

John buried his fingers in Sherlock’s hair, scratching his scalp lightly near the base of his horn.

Sherlock tensed. John froze mid-scratch.

“Not good?” John asked.

“No, I like it,” said Sherlock. “It’s… It’s… unexpected, is all.”

Whether Sherlock meant that he hadn’t expected John to do that or whether he meant that he hadn’t expected to like it, John didn’t know.

It was probably a bit of both.

“Mmm,” said John, his lips still on Sherlock’s. “I… uhmm…” He kissed Sherlock again. “May I touch your horns?”

“I don’t see why you’d want to.”

John rolled his eyes.

“But yes,” said Sherlock.

So John went on, giving the area around the horn a last scratch before stroking the horn itself, and testing the sharpness of the tip.

About like the tine of a dinner fork, he thought — it could do some damage, but there’d have to be some concentrated effort behind it.

John closed his eyes and put his hand on Sherlock’s throat — feeling the movement of muscles and tendons as Sherlock kissed him. He swept his hand over Sherlock’s shoulder and down his arm. Sherlock was larger now, but other than that, he felt the same as when John touched him during the witching hour.

But now he could look, as well. He opened his eyes again.

The scrutinising expression on Sherlock’s face was so perfectly what John had pictured that he grinned and shook his head.

“You know I watch you,” said Sherlock, “when you have the blindfold on.”

“Mmm-hmm,” said John. “I can almost feel it, as a matter of fact. And now, I can watch you back.” He skimmed his fingers over Sherlock’s nipple, letting it catch against the pads as it became erect.

Sherlock blinked once, very slowly.

John took Sherlock’s nipple between his fingers and rolled it.

Sherlock blinked more rapidly. He took in a small breath of air and growled again.

“Feels good?” asked John.

“Yes.”

“I want that. I want you to feel good.” He pinched Sherlock’s nipple a little harder, escalating the sensation the way he knew Sherlock liked. Sherlock arched slightly, pressing his nipple into John’s hand. “I want to watch you feeling good, Sherlock, because of me, because I’m making you feel that way.”

“I wish I could return the favour,” said Sherlock.

“Who says you can’t?”

Sherlock brought his paw to John’s chest and rubbed the pad of it over John’s pectoral muscle, while trying to pull the tips of his fingers back so as not to scratch John with his claws.

“Try bending them under,” suggested John.

Sherlock curled his paw into a not terribly close approximation of a fist. He looked at it as if trying to figure out how this was an improvement. Then he smiled and ran the curved backs of his claws over John’s nipple.

John shivered and moaned softly.

“I do believe you enjoy the danger, John Watson.”

“You aren’t— mmph— wrong.”

They kissed again.

He did enjoy the danger. He enjoyed the claws and the hooves and the massive horns. He enjoyed touching them, feeling their solidity, their literal heft and sting. And he enjoyed laying his naked body here — without armour or weapon, without even really knowing what he was doing — nothing between him and the very real damage Sherlock could wreak except trust, except a gossamer thread of faith in the goodness of this man’s heart.

He would even bow his head and let Sherlock place a chain around his neck.

He suspected that he was too late in realising that.

That he was already thoroughly entangled.

And utterly undismayed about it.

“I want to see you.” John ran his hand down Sherlock’s torso, down under the blanket, until he reached the line where skin became a dense coat of hair.

Sherlock searched John’s eyes for a moment before nodding his head.

“Alright.”

John sat up and pulled the blanket off Sherlock’s lower body. With the exception of the time his robe had come undone, he’d never allowed John to see him below the waist.

From just below his navel to his fetlocks, Sherlock was covered in sleek, russet-brown hair — like the summer coat of a horse. His hips were wide to accommodate the bones and musculature of a horse’s hindquarters, although his legs were somewhat straighter than a horse’s, John thought. His tail was indeed like a lion’s — covered in the same russet-brown hair as the rest and ending in an ivory tuft like his fetlocks.

And in the middle of all of this lay Sherlock’s immense cock. It was a deeper shade of brown than his coat and covered in ivory splotches, as was his scrotum. John hadn’t noticed any pubic hair the first time he’d glimpsed Sherlock’s genitals, but now he saw that there were a few ivory curls surrounding them.

The whole effect was aesthetically pleasing. Why his enemy would want to turn him into an large, unusual, but rather lovely satyr was beyond John’s comprehension.

John laid his palm high on Sherlock’s leg. The skin under his hand jumped, like a horse trying to flick off a fly. John looked up at Sherlock’s face. He was looking away from John and biting his lip.

John smoothed and petted the spot until Sherlock looked at him again.

“You’re gorgeous, Sherlock,” said John. “And I can’t decide if that’s something you don’t see or if you do see it, and it’s just another, more subtle, form of punishment.”

“This body is meant to represent my many failings — to manifest them physically. Moriarty thinks me perversely proud of my freakishness. So he gave me an elegantly monstrous appearance.”

John nodded. “You are a madman, and a bit of an arrogant prick.” Sherlock’s eyes widened in outrage, and John smiled at him. “And a genius, and kind-hearted—”

“I’m no such thing,” said Sherlock.

“Mrs. Hudson would beg to differ. She offered to be confined to a pocket dimension of Faerie – the place you helped her escape – just to keep you from being too lonely. You’re also the kind of person who’d work to clear an innocent woman’s name decades after she was convicted. And you’re talented and courageous. Maybe I’m attracted to all of this…” He waved his hand at Sherlock’s body. “…because I also like all of that.”

Sherlock looked away again. “You’re an idiot.” His voice was thick with… something. John was pretty sure it wasn’t disgust at his idiocy though.

He leaned forward and nosed his way under Sherlock’s horn to kiss his jaw. “Maybe.”

“Definitely,” said Sherlock, tipping his head back to give John better access.

John continued kissing down Sherlock’s long neck, pausing to nip at the hollow above his clavicle before kissing his way across Sherlock’s chest and taking his nipple into his mouth.

Sherlock moaned — a low, rumble that washed down John’s flesh, making him shiver.

Sherlock’s paws moved restlessly against the bed until John lifted his head and said, “Do it. Touch me.”

“You’ll tell me if I’m hurting you,” said Sherlock.

It wasn’t a question, but John said, “Yes,” anyway.

Sherlock cradled John’s head in one paw, and John took that as a sign that he should go back to mouthing Sherlock’s nipple. Sherlock stroked John’s back with his other paw, sometimes pressing the pad against John’s skin when John did something particularly good, sometimes grazing John’s skin with his claws, but not stopping.

And the sounds he made drove John mad. He lifted his head again.

“Don’t stop,” whinged Sherlock.

“I’m not,” said John. “I just need a breather. And I want to try something, okay?”

Sherlock nodded.

John sat up and scooted a few inches down the bed until he was level with Sherlock’s thighs, on top of which lay his cock.

He wrapped his hand around it and stroked it gently. The skin was butter-soft and smooth, and the flesh it covered didn’t feel entirely flaccid, but thick and spongy. John assumed this was its normal state. He slid his hand under it and lifted. It was heavy and warm.

“It won’t do anything more exciting than that,” said Sherlock.

“Not the point, really. How does it feel?

Sherlock scowled. “It feels good,” he admitted. “When you touch it. When I do, it’s just...” He held up his claws. “...painful.”

“Alright.” John crawled across the bed to get the lube. He put a generous helping of it in his hands and warmed it. Then, taking Sherlock’s massive organ in both hands, he began getting it thoroughly wet.

Sherlock moaned.

Sherlock was right in that his cock didn’t get any harder, but he was wrong about how exciting it could be. John was fascinated… no, he was enamoured of Sherlock’s cock. His hands slipped up and down, seeking the motions and pressure that pulled the most heartfelt moans from Sherlock’s mouth, that caused Sherlock’s hips to twitch, that made the muscles in his stomach jump and shiver.

John laid Sherlock’s cock on his belly and slipped a finger under his foreskin, circling the tip as he wrapped his other hand gently around one of Sherlock’s balls.

“Good?” asked John.

“God, yes. More.”

“More here?” asked John, increasing the pressure on Sherlock’s testicle. “Or here?” He carefully slipped another finger under Sherlock’s foreskin.

“They’re both fantastic. I...”

Sherlock never finished that – just dug his claws into the mattress, shut his eyes tight, and growled.

John’s own cock twitched in sympathy as he watched Sherlock respond to him.

Sherlock didn’t gasp for breath, of course. His chest and lips, well-kissed though they were, didn’t turn pink.

But he bit those pale lips, and he cried out in half-human, half-animal growls that seemed to roll over John’s skin like thunder.

A feral, excited utterance more powerful and far more arousing than any dream.

John lifted Sherlock’s cock again, pulling back Sherlock’s foreskin, and took the head into his mouth, if just barely. He licked and sucked at it, his eyes on Sherlock’s face when Sherlock opened his own eyes in time to watch John grasp him with both hands and stuff the tip into his straining mouth.

“John.” Sherlock’s voice was suddenly as soft as rough velvet. He curled his claws under and stroked John’s cheek.

John laid Sherlock’s cock down against his belly and straddled his thick thighs. He applied what was left of the lube on his hands to himself. Then he leaned forward and thrust slowly, dragging his own hard and aching cock against Sherlock’s.

“Christ! John!”

John tucked his head down and sucked Sherlock’s nipple.

He could feel Sherlock’s paws on his back and arse, stroking and petting him.

John thrust slow and firm along Sherlock’s plush, yielding cock, pressing and stretching the impossible length of the shaft until he was rubbing him cockhead to cockhead.

Over and over he drove them together, driving Sherlock closer to orgasm, he hoped.

Sherlock put his paw on John’s head and leaned forward to kiss him, pricking John’s scalp in the process.

And that — the small twinge and the knowledge that Sherlock didn’t mean to cause even that much pain, but his control was thin — it reached into John and it plucked at something dark.

Something that understood what Sherlock feared he could do with all that sharpness and strength.

Something that _knew_ that fear intimately.

Those claws pricked that thing, and as Sherlock’s mouth sucked at John’s, it seemed to John that he drew the darkness up and into himself.

And between them it became something very like compassion and empathy — and tenderness.

The tremors started low in Sherlock’s belly.

John shoved his hand between them to hold their cocks together as Sherlock arched and shook under him.

And Sherlock drew a deep breath and roared — deep and wild and loud enough to shake the window.

And also loud enough to startle John out of his own impending orgasm. But he held onto Sherlock, clung to him through the shivering aftershocks of pleasure all the way into the embarrassed shock of what had just occurred.

“Well, that was unexpected,” said John, his cheek against Sherlock’s chest.

“It was all unexpected, John.”

John laughed. He was too full of humour and… joy not to. He lifted his head and looked at Sherlock with a big, fond grin on his face.

“God, but you’re a gift, Sherlock.”

“I’m—”

“You’re what?”

“I was going to say, ‘I’m not,’ but it seems churlish to argue the point,” said Sherlock.

“You’re absolutely right,” said John. “You’ll just have to accept it.”

Sherlock frowned.

“You haven’t reached climax.”

“Yeah,” said John, wiggling his little finger in one ear. “I got a bit distracted.”

“Well, that won’t do. Come here.” Sherlock put his arms around him and rolled them over, taking care to keep his weight off John.

“What’re you going to do?”

“I’m going to suck you off,” said Sherlock

John cleared his throat. “I see. I should warn you — lube tastes awful.”

Sherlock just rolled his eyes and moved down the bed until he was crouched between John’s thighs. He rubbed his horns against the sensitive skin on the inner side of each one and took John’s cock into his mouth without further ado.

“God, Sherlock. Your mouth is so fucking warm.”

Sherlock pulled off John’s cock with a slight pop.

“It’s magic,” said Sherlock. Then he licked John’s left testicle and put his mouth back on John’s prick.

“Yeah, it’s fucking magic, alright.” John leaned up on his elbows to watch Sherlock.

Sherlock winked at him and lashed his tail.

John wondered if that was sensitive too.

But he’d have to wait to find out. He’d been close when Sherlock had started sucking him. He was there now.

“Haah!” Sherlock let go of John’s cock and let it slap against his belly.

“Ah!” said John in surprise, then, “Haah!” again as another thick rope spurted nearly to his chest.

Sherlock spit what had gotten into his mouth next to the rest of the come on John’s stomach.

“I can’t ingest anything when I’m like this,” he explained sheepishly.

“Yeah, I remember.” said John, touching Sherlock’s cheek and scratching the skin at the base of Sherlock’s horn again.

Sherlock lay himself next to John and kissed him.

“Hey,” said John, snuggling down against Sherlock, “if I fall back asleep, do you think the flat magic will clean me up?”

  
  


John didn’t get a chance to test that out, however. Once his body had satisfied one need, it began to make others known. The flat was kind enough to manifest a flannel in the bedside drawer for him, though.

Two toasts, one tea, and a shower later, John checked the messages on his mobile.

There were three texts from Harry, spread out over a week.

“Ugh! Feel lousy! Calling in. Why r u not here bringing me broth, ffs? Some doctor u r!”

“Now I have to go see actual gp! Hope ur happy!”

“Flu. In hospital. Might die. All ur fault.”

John texted her back.

“Sorry. Need anything? Let me know if you’re alive.”

John slipped the mobile into his pocket and went for his run. It rang just as he was coming back to 221B.

“Harry?”

“Johnd?” She sounded awful. Her voice was almost a full octave deeper than usual and her nose was obviously stuffed up. “Why are you breathind like that? Did you andswer the phoned in the middle of shanggind Bister Hebrides?”

“I was on a run,” said John.

“Ond a rund? With a caned?”

“I don’t use it anymore. Look, are you okay?”

“You don’d use the caned? Sindce whend?”

“A few months now. Answer the question. Are you okay?”

“Ndo! I’mb ndot okay! I have a case of the flu so bad they put mbe ind hospital! And ndow they’re kickind me out tomborrow!” There followed a coughing fit which John was pretty sure saved him from having to hear his sister’s “State of the NHS” diatribe. “Johnnnd,” she said once her diaphragm had calmed, “I ndeed you. I cand barely spoond soup indto mby mbouth and shuffle to the loo.”

John sighed. “Alright. I’ll pick you up. What time?

“Elevend. They don’d wand to feed mbe lundch or andythind.”

“Eleven,” said John. “I’ll be there.”

“You better be.”

“Feel better, Harry.”

John ended the call and went to find Sherlock.

  
  


_John’s cold despite the fact that he’s running. He should head home._

_He starts to turn back when he sees the shadows at the the end of the street._

_Hears the voices._

_Children laughing and screaming. A siren. Someone coughing._

_He turns and hurries back to the half-circle light and 221B and Sherlock._

_But there are shadows there too._

_And voices._

_He slips on the wet pavement — hears a cracking sound. He’s broken his patella, he’s sure of it. Probably tore some ligaments._

_It hurts less than he expects but he’s grateful for his cane to lean on as he tries to make his way home._

_One of the shadows walks toward him. He sees her face — Harry._

_She clicks her tongue._ _“You’ll never make it in time like that,” she says._

_Then she kicks the cane out from under him._

John woke to the sensation of falling.

He gasped and flung his hands out into the dark.

“John?” Sherlock’s voice seemed thunderous so close to his ear.

John opened his eyes on Sherlock’s concerned face framed by the familiar curving horns.

“Are you alright?” asked Sherlock.

“Yeah,” said John, mustering a smile. “Just a nightmare. I was running outside and slipped on the cobblestones. I had that feeling like I was really falling.”

Sherlock drew John closer to his big warm body.

“Setts,” said Sherlock.

“Come again?”

“They’re called setts. Cobblestones are round.”

John laughed, burying his face against Sherlock’s chest. “Of course they are.”

“That’s no longer common knowledge?”

“No,” said John. “No, I’d say it’s not. Most streets are covered in asphalt unless the neighbourhood is terribly posh and historical.”

“Perhaps I should delete it, then.”

“What time is it?” asked John.

“Nearly nine-thirty. I would have woken you soon.”

“Ugh. I can’t remember when I’ve slept this late.”

Sherlock put a claw under John’s chin and tipped his face up for a kiss.

They both knew why John hadn’t gotten any sleep last night. It had nothing to do with his dreams and everything to do with finding out that Sherlock’s tail was indeed sensitive.

“Better go get ready,” said Sherlock.

John nodded and crawled out of the bed.

Twenty minutes later, he came down to the sitting room — showered, shaven, wearing a tweed jacket, and carrying a small gym bag.

“Ready then?” asked Sherlock. He was sitting in his usual chair.

John nodded. “Yeah.”

Sherlock stood. “Just walk to the end of the street. It won’t take long to find it. When you come back, say my name, and the fog should appear.”

John nodded again.

Sherlock bent and kissed him. “Three days, John. 72 hours — no more. I can’t hold the door open any longer than that.”

“I remember. I promise you, I’ll be back. I don’t really want to go in the first place.”

“Influenza is serious. You need to see to your sister.”

“I know that, but she’s over the worst of it,” said John. “She just needs someone to feed her up for a bit.”

“Then she’s fortunate to have you. It’s ten. You should go now.”

John nodded again and turned toward the door. At the threshold, he looked over his shoulder at Sherlock. “I’ll be home soon, Sherlock. I swear it.”

“I’m holding you to that,” said Sherlock.

  
  


“Here we are,” said John as he unlocked the door of Harry’s flat for her and dropped the hospital bag containing her dirty clothes onto a chair. He’d stopped here earlier to drop off his bag and pick up a fresh set of clothes for her before fetching her from the hospital.

“Ugh, cand I crawl indto bed and die ndow?” asked Harry.

“You can crawl into bed,” said John, walking her back to the bedroom. “But no dying. Only getting better.” He opened the top drawer of her bureau.

“What do you thindk you’re doingd?” she asked, sitting down on the bed.

“Getting you some pyjamas,” he said, holding up a pair of soft-knit bottoms with purple unicorns on them.

“Who said you could just dig through mby drawers?”

“How do you think I found you a pair of jeans and that shirt, not to mention clean knickers?” He handed her the pyjama bottoms along with a purple t-shirt.

She glared at him.

“Christ, Harry. Did you really think I’d be shocked by a vibrator and a pair of fuzzy handcuffs?”

“I hate you,” she said.

“I hate you too,” replied John. He kissed her on the forehead. “I’ll go make us something to eat then. You get changed.”

John busied himself in the kitchen, making tea and heating up a tin of soup, but by the time he went to check on Harry, she was lying on top of her covers, fast asleep. She barely woke as John manoeuvred her under the blankets and tucked her in.

He put the soup in the fridge and drank the tea himself.

He sat on the couch, missing Sherlock and flipping through channels on the telly. It was hard to find something he wanted to watch when the telly couldn’t read his mind. About three months, give or take, was how long it took to get spoilt apparently.

He supposed he should be using the time while his sister slept to pick up some groceries.

Harry ended up sleeping for the next five hours while John shopped, did two loads of wash, and cleaned the tub in case Harry wanted a bath later.

And thought about Sherlock and the curse.

If John could lift the curse, they’d all be free to go. That’s what Sherlock had said the very first night. But what did that mean, exactly? Mrs. Hudson had owned 221B before it got stuck in a pocket dimension, so presumably it had a place in the mundane world. And Mrs. Hudson had spoken about getting back to the mundane world herself — presumably that’s what Sherlock meant by “free to go.”

And Sherlock’s appearance was also part of the curse, so lifting it meant that he’d be fully human again all the time.

In the mundane world.

Possibly living in the real 221B.

Possibly dating John and solving crimes? John thought he could be useful with that — fill in some holes in Sherlock’s knowledge of the last few decades anyway.

That could be…

… pretty amazing, actually.

  
  


The rest of that day and most of the next were taken up with such reveries.

Harry mostly slept.

John put as many liquid calories into her as he could during her brief periods of wakefulness, but as he’d told Sherlock, she was well over the worst of it.

Bit by bit, in order to keep her awake long enough to eat some soup, John got her to tell him — well, complain to him really — about her illness.

“Did you get a flu jab this year?” he asked before he could think better of it.

“Of course I did! How stupid do you thindk I amb?!”

Harry, whose immune system tended to have a scorched earth policy when it came to fighting off viruses, always got her jab, but as it turned out, there was a strain going around that hadn’t been part of the standard vaccination routine this year.

She’d gone to her GP when her fever hit 39 and she couldn’t hold anything down. The GP had her admitted because of severe dehydration.

Now she was back home and no longer contagious, just tired and congested. John’s only job now was to make sure that she didn’t neglect herself and land back in the hospital with some complication or another.

On the morning of the third day — when John had been absent from Baker Street for about forty hours — Harry finally woke up with an appetite. Her congestion was breaking up and she was much more alert.

John fixed them both a vegetarian fry up.

Harry dug into it like a half-starved bear emerging from hibernation.

“Nice jumper,” she said, when she finally came up for air.

“Er, thanks,” said John.

“That shade of green really brings out the blue of your eyes.”

“If you say so.”

“I don’t think I’ve seen it before,” she said.

“Funny. My eyes have always been blue.”

“That jumper, you prat. That’s new.”

“Yeah,” said John. “It’s new.”

“New jeans too.”

“I suppose so.”

“They fit you really well.” She popped another mushroom into her mouth.

“What do you mean?” John was hoping she wouldn’t compliment his butt.

“They make your butt look great,” she said. “Length is perfect too.” She shoveled in a couple more mouthfuls of potatoes.

“Why are you even noticing my butt?”

“Nothing creepy, John! I don’t even like men’s butts. Just — objectively speaking — those trousers are very flattering.”

“Thank you, and please don’t ever mention my butt again.”

Harry rolled her eyes and grabbed the last piece of toast.

“You have a lot of new clothes,” she said. “New jacket, new shoes — I don’t think I’ve seen those shirts before either.”

“What’s your point?” John asked, although he knew damn well where this conversation was going to end. Harry was in a mood to needle him until he said something he regretted. Something she’d use as leverage later.

“You left for the ‘Hebrides’ — transportation from the Hebrides runs awful quick these days, by the by — nearly four months ago, with nothing but the clothes you were wearing as far as I can tell, and now you have a whole brand-new wardrobe which contains a hand-knit jumper, tailored shirts and jeans, and, as far as I can tell, a bespoke jacket. And that’s not to mention a pair of shoes that could pay for your old room for six months.”

John ground his teeth, noticed he was grinding his teeth, and consciously unclenched his jaw.

“You have a sugar daddy, John.”

“Harry…”

“I don’t blame you, mind. I’d fuck a bloke myself for less.”

John stood up and took the empty plates to the sink.

“Go take a bath,” he said. “You need it.”

  
  


For the rest of the day, Harry seemed to have forgotten about John’s wardrobe, his love life, and the conjectural relationship between the two. She took a bath and made a shopping list that John went out and filled. They ate vegetable lasagna from Tesco.

They talked about Brexit and football and other safe subjects that were unlikely to get them angry — with each other anyway.

Harry took a long nap in the middle of the day, which she needed, but which left her restless that night, so they watched _A Fish Called Wanda_ — a movie they’d both loved when they were teenagers.

“Did you get me tampons?” asked Harry, as the credits were rolling.

“Yeah,” said John. “I put them in the drawer under the sink.”

“Good. That should be starting any minute now. Being sick and alone isn’t bad enough, I guess. I get to have my period too.”

“You’ll be fine. Just take it easy for awhile. You’ve got plenty of food, and all your wash is done up.”

“Lets you off the hook then, doesn’t it?” she muttered.

John ignored her.

“So — does Mr. Hebrides have a name?” she asked.

“Of course he does,” said John.

“But if you tell me, you’ll have to kill me?”

John sighed. “It’s Sherlock.”

“Sherlock?” said Harry. “What kind of name is Sherlock?”

“What’s wrong with Sherlock?”

“It sounds made-up.”

“If I was going to make something up, I’d have told you his name is Dave. You’d believe I was dating a Dave.”

“Fair point,” she conceded. “What’s he do when he’s not doing you?”

“He’s a consulting detective.”

“A what now?”

“People pay him to solve crimes,” said John.

“Now _that_ you are most definitely making up.”

“I promise you I’m not.”

“Is he a decent lay?” she asked.

“That’s none of your business.”

“Do you luurrrve him?”

“That’s also none of your business.”

“Oh come on, John,” she wheedled. “You can tell me.”

“I really don’t want to talk about it,” he said.

“Why not? If you’re so smitten you can’t even be arsed to pay your rent, why are you not shouting it from the rooftops? I would be.”

“I’m not you.”

“No kidding.”

“It’s just — once you start talking about someone, it changes things, you know?”

“If by ‘changes things’ you mean it makes it so you can’t just compartmentalise it and pretend it’s not real whenever it suits you — sure, I know what you mean.”

“Not everyone is Clara, Harry.”

“Bringing up my ex,” she said. “Thanks.”

“It’s not that I don’t want it to be real,” said John. “I’m afraid that it might not be, and if I try to bring it out and show anyone, it’ll just… disappear.”

“Sounds like you want a commitment before you go to all the trouble of telling everyone you’re gay.”

 _Ah_ , thought John. _Here it comes_.

“I’m not gay,” he pointed out.

“Just for pay, then?”

“Harry, I’m warning you.”

“Yeah, yeah. You’re bisexual. You think anyone’s going to care, John? When you’re out on the street with— _Sherr-lock_ , do you think people are going to say, ‘There goes John Watson and his boyfriend. John’s not gay, though. He likes pussy too, so it’s alright?’”

“I can’t imagine why I never came out to you.”

“Sorry I’m not being supportive enough of your little walk on the queer side. Sorry I interrupted it by almost dying.”

John turned off the telly. “Right. Time for bed.” He grabbed his toothbrush out of his bag and stalked off to the bathroom.

Harry followed him.

“Listen! You don’t just get to fuck off to God-knows-where-but-it-sure-as-hell-ain’t-the-fucking-Hebrides and stick me with all your responsibilities for fucking _months_ and then just waltz in here wearing clothes that cost more than my goddamn car, tell me fuck-all about where you’ve been or what you’ve been doing, heat up a couple tins of soup, and act like _you’re_ the injured fucking party!”

“Look, if I could explain it, I would,” said John, aggressively putting toothpaste on his brush.

“Would you?”

“Well, no. Not now, I wouldn’t.” He shut the door and started brushing his teeth.

Harry was in her bedroom with the door closed when he came out. He heard her slip into the bathroom as he was making up the sofa. When he heard the door open again, he pretended to be asleep, but she never saw the performance. She went directly to her room.

 _We_ _’re twelve_ , thought John as he set the alarm on his mobile.

He snorted. When they were twelve, an argument like this wouldn’t have ended until their dad took off his belt.

Somewhere along the line, they’d at least learned to walk away from it.

  
  


“ _Help me, John.”_

_Sherlock’s in John’s room, kneeling by the bed._

“ _John, it hurts.”_

_John sits up._ _“What hurts? Tell me.”_

_Sherlock’s hands are clutching his chest. “Here,” he says. “It burns.”_

“ _Lie down,” he tells Sherlock. “Let me see.”_

_John stands next to the operating table and peels back Sherlock’s robe._

_In the middle of Sherlock’s chest is an ember. It has burned a hole through skin and bone._

_John recognises the stench of burning flesh._

_Sherlock screams._

_John’s hand shakes as he tries to pull the ember out with forceps._

_It’s burning a hole in Sherlock’s heart._

“ _At least give me something to stop the pain,” snaps Sherlock._

_The leather case sits on the tray with the other surgical instruments._

_John opens it, but the syringe is shattered. The vial as well. And the drug has seeped into the velvet lining._

_Sherlock opens his mouth to scream again, and smoke billows out._

The first thing that registered on John’s conscious mind was the smell of coffee and burnt toast.

The second thing was Harry’s voice.

“Ow! Fuck!” Something fell on the floor, presumably a very hot piece of burnt toast.

“Harry?” Something wasn’t right, but John couldn’t put his finger on it.

“Oh,” she said. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”

“’Salright.” John looked at her, illuminated by the light shining through the kitchen window as she bent over to pick up the toast.

The light. It was wrong. He’d set the alarm for seven-thirty so he’d have time to take care of any last-minute things that Harry needed. If it hadn’t gone off yet, it shouldn’t be so bright outside.

“Listen,” she said. “About last night — I know I was being a bi—”

“What time is it?” asked John.

“Nine-thirty.”

“Nine-thirty?!” He snatched up his mobile. “9:28” the display read. There was no alarm set.

John dropped it onto the coffee table.

“I know I set an alarm.” He yanked off his pyjama bottoms and hauled his jeans up over his hips.

“You did,” said Harry. “But you slept for shit last night — moaning and thrashing about. I turned it off so you could have a lie-in.”

“Fuck.” John swallowed. He pulled his jumper over the undershirt he’d worn last night, and shoved his feet, sans socks, into his shoes.

“What? Going to miss the last train to Scotland?” asked Harry.

“I swore I’d be back by _ten_. I _promised_ Sherlock.” John grabbed his mobile and was out the door.

“I knew you weren’t in the fucking Hebrides!” Harry shouted down the hall behind him.

John sprinted to the tube station, barely catching the train.

He spent the entire 18-minute ride praying that nothing happened to delay the train.

He couldn’t stop thinking of the Sherlock in his dream — “At least give me something to stop the pain…”

Sherlock was in pain — John knew it.

He knew it.

As the train pulled into the stop nearest Baker Street, John checked his mobile — 9:50.

He was running again. There was the intersection, and there was Baker Street — bright and busy with mid-morning traffic.

“Sherlock,” said John, running down the street.

Nothing.

“Sherlock,” louder this time, but still nothing.

“Sherlock!” he shouted. “Let me in!”

Several alarmed stares — but no fog.

Not even a wisp.

“Sherlock!” He stopped, gasping for air and looking frantically around. This was where it should be. According to the numbers on the surrounding buildings, this was it. But there was nothing except a sandwich shop.

And then — next to the shop, he saw it. A black door with brass numbers — 221B

He swore it hadn’t been there just a moment before.

He ran up the steps and pounded on the door.

“Sherlock!” he shouted, wondering how long it would be before someone reported him to the police.

“John!”

He looked around. Mrs. Hudson was hurrying from the sandwich place.

“Oh, John!” she cried, grasping his arms. “He threw me out!” She saw the door behind John and her eyes went wide. “The pocket dimension is shrinking! You’ve got to go in there.”

“I don’t know how,” said John. “I keep calling…”

“He’s too weak and the pocket dimension is too small,” she said. She reached into her skirt pocket and drew out a big, old-fashioned iron key. “Use this.”

John took the key from her and fitted it into the lock.

“He’ll be at the heart of the enchantment,” said Mrs. Hudson. “Hurry, there’s no time left!”

John nodded at her and turned the key.

Inside was the familiar hallway, looking as though it had been abandoned over a century ago. Dust and cobwebs were everywhere, and the floor was covered in mouse droppings. At the end of the hall, he could see that the door to Mrs. Hudson’s kitchen had fallen off its hinges.

The house was returning to the mundane world.

John ran up the steps.

The door to the flat was rusty and stiff. Sunlight shone weakly through the grimy windows, falling on furnishings that were at once familiar and strange. The bookcases were still there, but the contents were… off. It was hard to pinpoint why through all the dust. Sherlock’s leather chair was gone, replaced by an armchair of indeterminate colour.

“Sherlock!”

No answer.

John turned toward the kitchen, but it was no longer a kitchen. Bookcases lined most of the walls and there was a sideboard with glass decanters sitting on top. A dining table and chairs took up the centre of the room.

John walked through it.

There was no longer a bathroom, but the door to Sherlock’s room was in the same place.

John turned the knob and walked in.

The giant bed was gone. There was a wardrobe, a table, a single brass bed, and a coal-burning fireplace in the corner.

But no Sherlock.

If this wasn’t the heart of the enchantment, what was?

He turned and hurried back through the flat, and up the stairs.

The door to his room was open. Inside he could see the bed he’d slept in for the last few months and the familiar wallpaper with the skylarks.

And lying across that bed with his hooves drawn up... was Sherlock.

“Sherlock!”

John scrambled up on the bed to kneel next to him.

He took Sherlock’s paw in his hands. “Sherlock, I’m here.”

Sherlock sucked in one laboured breath.

“John,” he sighed, never opening his eyes.

“Yeah, I’m here. I—”

But Sherlock didn’t move.

“Sherlock.” John shook him.

He wasn’t breathing.

He had breathed, but now he wasn’t.

John could hear traffic outside.

The pocket dimension hadn’t returned to normal.

More importantly, Sherlock wasn’t moving.

_You are losing your patient, Doctor Watson._

Right.

John knew how to observe, how to draw conclusions. But not with crime scenes — with bodies.

John pressed his ear to Sherlock’s chest. There was a heartbeat — a strong, steady heartbeat — but no breath.

The _Stasis_ spell was clearly no longer in effect.

John tilted Sherlock’s head back, pinched his nose, and breathed into Sherlock’s mouth.

Again.

Again.

And again.

He checked Sherlock’s pulse. It was still strong.

He continued to breathe for Sherlock — buying time while his mind looked for answers.

Sherlock was still a monster — so the curse remained unbroken. This must be the other “out” Sherlock had spoken of.

That out was obviously death — something Moriarty had gone to great lengths to deny Sherlock until now.

What had changed? Sherlock had said that Moriarty wouldn’t let him out of the curse until he’d suffered to Moriarty’s satisfaction.

John could break the curse or Moriarty could let Sherlock finally die once he’d “burned the heart out of him.”

It was a curious turn of phrase.

Sherlock’s heart seemed to be the one thing that _wasn’t_ suffering at the moment. Every time John checked, it was still beating steadily.

That’s when it clicked.

Sherlock’s heart wasn’t stopping – probably wouldn’t stop unless John couldn’t keep him properly ventilated because Sherlock’s heart had a patch of pure Faerie Magic.

The baby in the story was him. If John had doubts, Sherlock’s descriptions of the two brothers were enough to dispel them.

That’s why Moriarty was obsessed with Sherlock. He’d been in love with Sherlock’s mother and she had “wasted” her wish on the life of her sickly child by another man.

Sherlock’s act of “ingratitude” must have something to do with him not using that life as Moriarty saw fit.

Doing what he pleased with what was his.

John filled Sherlock’s lungs again. How long could he keep this up? He pulled his mobile out of his pocket. No bars, of course. He might have them on the stairs, but who would breathe for Sherlock?

John glanced toward the stairs, trying to gauge if he had the time to ring 999 and relate the situation to the dispatcher. The wallpaper on the landing was peeling. The bathroom door was gone.

The pocket dimension was still shrinking.

John was in this alone.

He breathed air into Sherlock again.

Alright — John must’ve found Sherlock at almost exactly ten. Sherlock breathed once and his heart was beating, so presumably that’s when the _Stasis_ spell had been removed.

He breathed once.

A breath away from dying — that wasn’t just the circumstances Merryweather happened to be under when Moriarty used the _Stasis_ spell on him — that was a fucking prerequisite.

Is that what Sherlock meant by doing what he pleased with the life he considered his own? Had he tried to commit suicide? Is that why the syringe was on the mantle? To remind him of how he’d ended up cursed?

An overdose of cocaine?

No.

Cocaine wouldn’t stop that magical heart.

It was an opiate — morphine probably. Like cocaine, it was available at every chemist’s shop back in those days.

Unable to stop his heart, Sherlock had tried to stop his lungs, and that had pissed Moriarty off. Whatever Sherlock had felt the need to escape, it wasn’t true suffering as far as Moriarty was concerned.

True suffering was loving someone who didn’t love you back.

Loving someone who was gone.

Sherlock was dying now because he knew that pain.

Because of John.

That was the release Sherlock had sought months ago when he’d attempted for a second time to goad John into giving him the drug. John would have been evicted from the pocket dimension and Sherlock would finally know what it was to love someone and lose them.

He would finally be allowed to die because the heart that Moriarty felt he owned would be broken.

John didn’t have time to feel guilty about it though. He could see cobwebs collecting in the corners of the room.

He breathed into Sherlock, wishing that he could borrow some of that great intellect for a bit.

John shook his head. His own intellect was nothing to sneeze at.

He’d solved one mystery. On to the next.

Sherlock had said that if the curse was broken, they’d all be free to go. That seemed like a rather positive outcome — one that Moriarty would have tried to prevent. So what were the conditions of the curse?

A monstrous body and…

…Isolation. Sherlock wasn’t just locked away from the world, the world was actively kept away from Sherlock.

People who could break the curse were kept away.

People who could create the circumstances by which Sherlock would be allowed to die were kept away.

John checked Sherlock’s pulse. It was weaker. Dust coated the chest of drawers across the room.

“I don’t like your second option, Sherlock,” said John before breathing into him again.

The second option was only slightly more likely than breaking the curse – that’s what Sherlock had said.

Until John had walked into the flat the second option was only slightly more likely than the first.

Because the only thing more unlikely than Sherlock Holmes loving someone, becoming romantically entangled with someone to the point where his heart would break to see them leave — was for that person to love him back.

He wasn’t wrong.

No, that had to be it.

_Right?_

John sat up and looked at Sherlock’s still face.

“I love you, Sherlock.”

Nothing.

The brass on the foot of the bed was darkening with tarnish.

“No!” shouted John.

He laid his head on Sherlock’s chest, heard one faint beat of his heart and nothing more.

“No,” whispered John, still straining to hear another heartbeat.

“Please,” he begged.

“Please, Sherlock — don’t be dead.” Dark splashes appeared on Sherlock’s dressing gown.

He pressed his forehead against Sherlock’s chest, against his heart. “I love you.”

“I heard you the first time.”

John’s head snapped up.

“And I love you too, but you knew that already.”

Sherlock’s eyes were open and crinkled at the corners in that way that they always crinkled when Sherlock was well and truly delighted.

John was, in fact, so caught up in that smile that it took a moment to register the things surrounding that smile — or rather, not surrounding it, like horns.

His hand moved to Sherlock’s temple at the same time that Sherlock’s hand touched his wet cheek.

“Sherlock? What…?”

“Shh. Just kiss me.”

So John did. He pressed his lips to Sherlock’s. He opened his mouth when he felt Sherlock’s tongue skim his lower lip. He let Sherlock pull him down until he was lying next to him.

“The curse?” asked John.

“Broken.”

“The pocket dimension?”

“Collapsed. 221B has returned to the mundane world.”

John tore his eyes off Sherlock long enough to make a quick assessment of the room. It appeared largely unchanged from four days ago.

Whatever— he could puzzle that out later.

“Mrs. Hudson?”

“This is only conjecture,” said Sherlock, “but probably in her kitchen brewing herself a bracing cup of tea. She’s had a very trying day.”

“Mor—” But Sherlock stopped him with a kiss.

“I’ll explain it all John, but first I want to make love to you, right here, in the full light of day, with no constraints — alright?”

John grinned. “Alright.”

  
  


Later, when they sat in Mrs. Hudson’s kitchen, finishing the first meal Sherlock had eaten in 132 years, Sherlock apologised for frightening them both.

“I made a grave error,” he said. “When I told you I could hold the door for three days, I was sure I could actually manage it for five. But there was one factor I didn’t know to take into account — Moriarty is dead.”

“Are you sure, dear?” asked Mrs. Hudson.

Sherlock nodded. “I realised on the second day that the magic in the pocket dimension was running out, and nothing was replacing it. I tried to get a message to you, John, but the crystals in my telephone had already been depleted. All I could do was to eke out the remaining magic until you returned and hope that you were finally ready to break the curse.”

“What do you mean ‘ready?’ You thought I knew how?” asked John.

“You didn’t? It was a bog-standard curse, John.”

“I had no idea,” said John. “I had to work it out over your unconscious body while the pocket dimension was collapsing around me.”

“Heavens!,” exclaimed Mrs. Hudson. “Don’t children read fairy tales any more?”

“Nobody told me they were how-to manuals,” said John.

“Are you saying they weren’t useful, so you deleted them?” asked Sherlock.

“Prat.”

“How do you think Moriarty died?” asked Mrs. Hudson.

“I’ll have to make some enquiries of course, but I believe The Woman killed him.”

“Irene Adler?” asked John.

Sherlock nodded. “I haven’t heard anything about Moriarty since her escape from prison. I assumed he was just bored with watching me scurry about my jar — but, to the best of my knowledge, no one else has heard from him either. If a faerie had killed him, Mycroft would have caught wind of it sooner rather than later. She has the ability to murder him and hide the evidence. She’s amazingly resourceful.”

“You said it wasn’t her style, when she was thought to be Merryweather’s murderer,” John pointed out.

“She wouldn’t kill someone if she thought she had other recourse. She had nothing left to lose with Moriarty. She knew too much about him, and with her habit of keeping proof of other people’s indiscretions, he would be hunting her. There was only one way for her to be free of him.”

  
  


“Will you miss the horns?” asked Sherlock

He and John were sitting in their chairs in front of the fire, tumblers of scotch and soda at their respective elbows.

“A little,” admitted John. “And the claws and that thing you did with your tail. And the way your smooth, glossy coat felt between my– ”

“I get the picture.”

John grinned. “It was an extraordinary experience, but I didn’t fall in love with horns or a tail or even a gigantic cock. I fell in love with you. And you’re anything but ordinary.”

Sherlock looked away for a second, then back at John. “Does that mean you’ll stay?”

“What? Here?” John pointed at the floor. “Live with you, you mean?”

“Yes, of cour–“

“Yeah, I’d love to.”

“Really? I have bad habits,” Sherlock pointed out.

“Odd hours and experiments in the kitchen?” asked John. “I assume you’re planning on expanding your wardrobe though.”

“My first order of business tomorrow will be to locate some clothes.” Sherlock picked up his glass, but rather than drink from it, he just swirled the contents a bit and stared into it.

“You have the whole world to choose from now, John. Are you sure?”

“You have the whole world too. Or as much of it as I do.”

Sherlock looked up from his glass. “I don’t, really. I’m…”

John slid to the edge of his seat and put his hand on Sherlock’s knee. “You’re the man who saved my life.”

“You’ve got that backwards, Dr. Watson.”

John shook his head. “I was walking around in a fog way before I found Baker Street. I was so far gone that fear felt like home. And way before you loved me, you helped me – because that’s the kind of person you are, Sherlock. You took that great big intellect of yours and all the restlessness and quirks that come with it, and you trained it to help people.”

“Isn’t that what you did?” asked Sherlock. “Took your… more than adequate intellect and your need to be a hero and turned it to saving lives?”

John bit his lip and smiled at Sherlock. “Maybe, for us, there isn’t a whole world of choices out there.”

“Wouldn’t matter if there were.” Sherlock leaned forward and kissed John.

They both sat back, smiling besottedly at each other. Well, Sherlock looked besotted. John just assumed that he did as well. He picked up his glass and took a drink.

“So what’s next?”

“Tomorrow I’ll ring Lestrade. He must have something that requires my expertise. And I’ll advertise my services, of course. It shouldn’t take long to find work. People do keep murdering each other and pilfering things.”

“Don’t forget blackmail,” said John. "And kidnapping."

“Heaven forfend!” Sherlock took a swallow from his drink and set the glass back on the table. “And you? What’s next for you?”

“I’m never going to hold a scalpel again,” said John, “but there are other kinds of doctors. Retraining shouldn’t take long.” He nudged Sherlock’s foot with his own. “We’re both going to have to do a great many things from now on that aren’t hanging around this flat and fucking. Are you ready for that?”

“As long as I can take you with me on some of those things,” said Sherlock. “As long as I can come home and sit in our chairs in front of the fire with you—”

“—And take me back to your room and ravish me?”

“Or be ravished myself. As long as I can do all that, I’m ready for anything.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Harry adds biphobia to her arsenal of weapons with which to goad her brother. Drug use, needles, and a past suicide attempt also make an appearance.  
> Other than that, it's just John's usual blood-soaked nightmares.


End file.
